Neil Gaiman
See also the Kids section and the Graphic Novels section.
I think what I like best about Neil Gaiman's books is that his characters are so great. I get sucked into wanting to know what happens.
Good Omens (1990)
Written with Terry Pratchett
Good Omens is one of my all time favorite books, and one that I'd take with me to be stranded on a desert island, because it's funny.
Really funny.
With lots of passages that make me giggle, and even laugh out loud, not just when I read them, but even when I go back and think about them later. Like:
...courting couples had come to listen to the splish and gurgle of the river in the Sussex sunset. He'd done that with Maud, his missus, before they were married. They'd come here to spoon, and on one memorable occasion, fork.
Even the footnotes are funny.
(24) So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life...
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?
26 And the Angel said, I had it here only a moment ago, I must have put it down some where, forget my own head next.
27 And the Lord did not ask him again.
But in addition to being funny, the book is just plain good. The characters are great, the story is great, the only weakness I can think of is that the whole thing has to end.
As far as the story: it's England, it's the Apocalypse, and the Antichrist is coming into his powers, except that, being eleven and having been misplaced as a baby, he doesn't really know about his powers. The only people who really know what's going on are an angel and a demon who've been on Earth so long they've gone native, and a young woman, Anathema Device, who is guided by her family heirloom, "The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter."
Although I like Anathema, I have to say that my favorite characters are Aziraphale and especially Crowley. There's something about a demon with verdant, thriving houseplants. (And I wonder whether his method really works. If so, I might consider using it.)
The thing about Good Omens is that Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman together manage to be even funnier than they are alone, which is pretty impressive, since I find both of them quite amusing.
If you haven't read this book, you should. It's really that good.
Oh, for Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett fans who have not yet read this book, Terry Pratchett's DEATH and not Neil Gaiman's Death, is one of the Hell's Angels of the Apocalypse.
"Woss the matter with you?" asked Big Ted, irritably. "Go on. Press 'D.' Elvis Presley died in 1976."
I DON'T CARE WHAT IT SAYS, said the tall biker in the helmet, I NEVER LAID A FINGER ON HIM.
Rating: 10/10
Stardust (1999)
Stardust reads much like a folktale, but not a folktale that I recognized, and certainly not a cleaned up Disney tale. As with everything else of his I have read, I would highly recommend Stardust.
I also recommend the version illustrated by Charles Vess.
Smoke and Mirrors (2001)
I started this book awhile ago, and at the time, the story I started reading was too dark for me, so I put it away for awhile. I picked it up again because I was desperately looking for books with short stories--books that I can put down with more ease that I can other books, and on the second read, I wasn't able to figure out what I had read the first time that was so dark. It seems that it took on proportions beyond itself while I was away from it.
That said there are a lot of very dark stories in this book, and even some of the stories I really liked had very dark overtones. Not sure whether my tastes of changed, or whether I am just becoming more immune to darker fiction that is as much horror as it is fantasy, or whether I'd just built it up to be bigger than it was. Immaterial to this book of course, but you'll have that.
Murder Mysteries is two stories in one. I love the story within a story, but the wrap around story is really quite creepy. It reminds me a bit of Stephen Brust's To Reign in Hell, except that the character of God is much more sympathetic in this story.
Shoggoth's Old Peculiar is very good, with the creepy far underneath, but still there. I supposed that knowing more about H.P. Lovecraft would have made the story better, but since I don't like scary things, just knowing the basics worked for me.
Only the End of the World Again made me think about Werewolves in a way that I hadn't before, but probably should have. After all, if one takes on the shape of a beast, mightn't they also take on the nature of one? And how do you deal with it when you awaken?
American Gods (2002)
Neil Gaiman integrates mythology with urban fantasy, and as always has fantastic characters. The story drew me in immediately, and I managed to read the entire book in two evenings (not that unusual for me, but still these were week nights!) I was fascinated by the idea that the various and assorted American Gods would interact with each other.
The Old Gods--the Norse, the Irish, the African--are clinging to the edges of life, surviving and finding worship however they can. Shadow, just released from prison, is hired by Mr. Wednesday to meddle in the affairs of these Gods.
I liked the idea that once a God is no longer worshiped he or she does not really die, but instead can become simply do their own thing--what they need to do to survive. There is something comforting about the thought that all the old Gods who were brought to this land by their worshipers may still be here, even if the worshippers are long gone. Of course thinking about it, I think that this topic was briefly covered in Piers Anthony's "Incarnation of Immortality" series, but not like this. I also was reminded in parts of Guy Gavriel Kay's "Fionovar Tapestry" series, which also dealt with a good deal of mythology and folklore.
What should I believe? thought Shadow, and the voice came back to him from somewhere deep beneath the world, in a bass rumble: Believe everything.
Rating: 9/10
Coraline (2002)
Coraline is a very good book, and being a young adult (whatever that means) book, it only took me a couple of hours to read. It's a little dark, but that's still a lot less dark than watching the news (something that kids don't do, although they probably should, except for the fact that it's all so depressing).
I particularly liked the way he worked out how she had to take care of things herself. She did the right thing of asking adults for help--it just happened not to work out, and for reasonable reason. (okay, perhaps not how it would have happened in reality, but it wasn't unreasonable.) I think that is important, because if a book is supposed to be based somewhat in our reality, the bits that happen in our reality should conform to the way things work. If it's an alternate reality, or a reality that exists beyond the reality we currently perceive, that's okay, but people in the "normal" reality should act like people on a "normal" reality.
And the point of all that rambling was the fact that Neil Gaiman's characters do that in Coraline. Otherwise, there are bits that are just gruesome enough that even though the book is about a female character, I think that smaller people of the male persuasion would like the book anyway. And of course for us adults, it's immaterial whether the lead character is a boy or a girl, what is important is that it's a good story, and as usual, that's what Neil Gaiman gives.
Wolves in the Walls (2003) with Dave McKean
I've been perusing the children's bookshelves recently, looking for gifts for our nephew Wilson, and discovered that an adult buying children's books doesn't get the strange looks I expected, so I have no problems purchasing Wolves in the Walls for myself, although I didn't tell this person at the register the book was for me. Let them think what they will.
Wolves in the Walls is collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean. Neil Gaiman is, of course, one of my favorite writers, so that made this an easy choice. Dave McKean has worked with Neil Gaiman on various other projects, including the covers of the 'Sandman' collections.
The book tells the tale of Lucy, who tries to tell her family that there are wolves in the walls of their house, but no one believes her. The writing reminds me less of other books that Neil Gaiman has written, and more like the bits of prose that occasionally appear in his journal and delight me to no end.
"Anyway, you know what they say about wolves," said her father. "If the wolves come out of the walls, it's all over."
"Who says that?" asked Lucy.
"People. Everybody. You know," said her father, and he went back to practicing his tuba."
That brief exchange me reminds me both of everything that was so frustrating about talking to people. People frequently give children the quick and easy answer, assuming that they won't understand a more complicated answer, or have patience for a more complicated answer, and so children are frequently given an easy mean-nothing answer.
But if you think about it, the same holds true for adults. If you have ever questioned a practice at the office, you'll sometimes learn that why things are done the way they are, is simply because "that is the way they have always been done," and no one knows why. So perhaps we give children the easy answer, in the hopes that as adults they will accept the easy answer instead of asking the hard questions of "Why?"
The artwork is, like much of what I have seen of Dave McKean's work, dark, although this is much lighter than his 'Sandman' covers. It is a mixture of photographs and drawings, melded together. What is interesting is that the art used to depict Lucy and her family and her pig puppet is the more realistic photographic type depiction, while the wolves are drawn almost exclusively as black and white sketches, with minimal color and realism.
As far as a recommendation, I liked it, and whether being a child at heart makes that a good recommendation for an actual child, you'll have to decide for yourself.
Anansi Boys (2005)
All summer I went back and forth over whether I was going to get Neil Gaiman's new book Anansi Boys in hardback, or wait until it came out in paperback. On one hand, I greatly prefer paperback books--they're smaller and lighter. On the other hand, I really didn't want to wait another year to read a new Neil Gaiman book.
Needless to say, I broke down and bought the book. And apparently lots of other felt the same way, as Anansi Boys hit the New York Times best seller list at #1. (Yay Neil Gaiman!)
Those who read American Gods will remember Aunt Nancy, or Anansi. Anansi Boys is about Anansi's sons, Fat Charlie and Spider. Fat Charlie lives in England and has always been mortified by his father, who has embarrassed Charlie in as many was possible, including sticking him with the nickname "Fat Charlie." Just as the children of hippies grow up to be accountants, the son of trickster Anansi grew up refusing to be amused.
Anansi Boys is shorter than I had expected--American Gods was a huge book, and for some reason I was expecting the same here. But that was fine--I like long books, but I like it a little better when an author can tell a story in a shorter format.
The tone was much lighter than American Gods, sort of if it had been crossed with Good Omens It was also more amused with itself--fitting for a book about Anansi I think.
As with American Gods I found it interesting that the characters described in great detail, and again I quite liked it. Knowing Aunt Nancy, I knew that Fat Charlie and Spider were black, but Neil Gaiman wastes little discussing the race of the characters in this book, and I quite like it, because in this type of fantasy it doesn't and shouldn't--matter what race someone is. At least that's my feeling. Neil Gaiman tells us that Fat Charlie isn't actually fat--just a little soft around the middle, and that Spider is lean and hard in comparison. Do we need much more information than that?
The style of the story is different from his previous books. It's not written like a fairy tale like Stardust, but it's much lighter in tone than American Gods. For me, the tone in each book is different, yet I can always catch glimpses of his voice that tells me this is a Neil Gaiman book.
And as always his storytelling is excellent. I'm not going to say that no one else spins a tale like Neil Gaiman, because that wouldn't be true. However, there are not a lot of authors who write that well, and it is always wonderful when one of them writes another book.
I also really liked the cover. Important bits are there, although you don't know it until you've read the book, so it doesn't give anything before you read the story. And I loved the chapter titles.
I really liked Anansi Boys. I like everything that Neil Gaiman has written. My only wish is that I not have to wait four more years for another novel.
Rating: 8/10
Go to the comics page for Sandman reviews
Books by Neil Gaiman:
Good Omens (1990), Smoke and Mirrors (1998), Stardust (1999), American Gods (2001), Anansi Boys (2005)
Graphic Novels: Preludes and Nocturnes (1991), The Doll's House (1991), Dream Country (1991), Season Of Mists (1992), A Game Of You (1993), Fables And Reflections (1993), Brief Lives (1994), World's End (1994), The Kindly Ones (1996), The Wake (1997), The Dream Hunters (1999) with Yoshitaka Amano, Sandman: Endless Nights (2003)
Kids Books: Coraline (2002), Wolves in the Walls (2003) with Dave McKean
