Good Omens

I first read Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett years ago (before I started this blog - I'm guessing the early 2000's).  I don't remember much about it except that I really enjoyed it (I was actually talking to my mom earlier today and she said I tried to get her to read it.  I don't remember that, but it's a testament to how much I liked the book if I tried to get her to read it, especially since it isn't remotely her kind of book).

So a friend of mine suggested that a group of us read it as a sort of book club book.  Since we're not able to see each other right now thanks to the pandemic, she thought a book club on Goodreads would be a great way to hang out, so to speak.  She suggested either Good Omens or another book; consensus was Good Omens (even by the people like me who would be rereading it).

So Good Omens is the story of the Antichrist, Adam Young.  He is mistakenly given to the wrong parents and grows up largely left alone in rural England (while the boy who Heaven and Hell thinks is the Antichrist grows up being tutored by their agents, who hope to sway him onto their sides).  It features a large and eclectic cast of characters, from the angel Aziraphale and the demon Crowley, to the three kids in Adam's gang (Pepper, Brian, and Wensleydale - the Them), the four horsemen of the apocalypse (War, Famine, Pollution and Death; Pollution replaced Pestilence, who retired when penicillin was invented), Anathema Device, the descendant of Agnes Nutter (a renowned witch who actually got the future right in her prophecies), a couple of witchhunters (Shadwell and Newton Pulsifer of the Witchfinder Army), and a medium (Madame Tracy - she's Shadwell's neighbour), who are almost all flailing about trying to stop the end of the world.

While I liked Good Omens the first time I read it....I honestly wasn't a huge fan this second time around.  It took me over 70 pages before I felt like things were actually getting interesting enough to continue.  I caught myself wondering around page 200 or so how there could possibly be another almost 200 pages in the story.  With the huge cast of characters, I found I only really enjoyed a few of them (mostly Aziraphale and Crowley, but more-so when they were together; there was a chunk in the middle of the book where they largely disappeared and that felt like a slog). 

With that being said though, I actually enjoyed the ending once I finally got there.  Having Adam's friends defeat the horsemen, and Newton halting nuclear Armageddon by attempting to "fix" the machine (because he breaks everything he tries to fix) was pretty great.

But overall, this felt like a book I should have left alone.  I would have preferred to have remembered Good Omens being great (even without actually remembering it in any detail), rather than now living with the fact that it isn't as good as I remember it being. :(

Oh, but one interesting side note on rereading it: when I first read it all those years ago, a friend of mine mentioned that it was really obvious whether Pratchett or Gaiman was writing a given part.  I hadn't yet read anything by Pratchett, so at that time I didn't notice this at all.  Going back to it now though, oh yeah, it seemed really obvious (particularly in the first half of the book - basically the really crazy stuff just felt more like Pratchett, as it were).

Norse Mythology

I wanted to read Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology back when it came out a year ago.  I read a bunch of Norse mythology back in school (it's hard to believe, but it's been eight years since I read The Poetic Edda and The Prose Edda!) and enjoyed it.  So I was interested to see what Neil Gaiman brought to the table.  I started reading Norse Mythology last night and finished it a few minutes ago; it's a super easy and enjoyable read.  It also felt like going back to an old friend because, after reading the two Eddas, all the stories in Norse Mythology were very familiar to me.

Gaiman's Norse Mythology is a retelling of the old Norse myths.  In the introduction he says he took bits and pieces of stories from both of the Eddas to create his versions.  His stories start with the beginning of the universe and how the worlds were created, give us some fun adventures of Thor, Loki, and the other gods, then end with Ragnarok and a glimpse of what happens afterwards.  Most of the stories start with some trickery by Loki, who then has to make things right afterwards.  Most of the stories are rather light romps (although they often end with the death of a bunch of giants because of course that's how stories with Thor will end), but the end few are much darker in tone.  Gaiman has modernized the tales a bit in his retellings (particularly the dialogue); in his introduction he said he tried to imagine himself back a long time ago in the lands where these stories were first told, but often the dialogue is much more modern than you would expect from that (like in "The Master Builder," Freya says to Loki "You talked these idiots into it" - that phrase sounds really modern). I don't think that this takes away from the retelling, but I did want to point out that it is there.

Overall, Norse Mythology is a quick and fun read if you are interested in or enjoy mythology (particularly Norse mythology).  I can see why everyone loved it when it first came out last February. :)

The Sleeper and the Spindle

I got The Sleeper and the Spindle out weeks ago from the library. I thought it was a graphic novel, but when I opened it to read, it actually is an illustrated prose story. So I put it aside because I wasn't in the mood for prose at the time (even Neil Gaiman's prose), and finally decided to read it tonight.

I knew The Sleeper and the Spindle was a Sleeping Beauty story. But I wasn't prepared for how Gaiman masterfully combined both Sleeping Beauty and Snow White (but looking back on it, it's a really obvious combination!)

The Sleeper and the Spindle starts with three dwarves travelling to the kingdom on the other side of an impassable mountain. There a group of people desperately asks for their aid in getting out of the kingdom because a plague of sleep is spreading. The sleep overtakes the people, but because the dwarves are magical they are immune. They return to their Queen to tell her what is happening.

The Queen herself had once spent an entire year sleeping due to magic. She and the dwarves agree that of all the bigger people, she has the best chance of also being immune. So she cancels her immanent wedding and goes with the dwarves to stop the plague.

The four of them journey to the other land and to the castle that is at the heart of the sleeping spell. There they find an old woman who remains awake in the castle and a beautiful young girl asleep. The Queen wakes the young girl with a kiss, only to discover the girl is the same kind of creature that the Queen's step mother had been. The girl stole the old woman's beauty, youth, and sleep years ago; the old woman was the young princess who had supposedly been sentenced to death when an evil fairy creature was slighted at her birthing ceremony seventy years ago. It was a fantastic twist to the Sleeping Beauty story that only Gaiman could have come up with (even though, like the combination of Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, it's surprisingly obvious).

Chris Riddell's art suits Gaiman's prose beautifully. This is one book I would love to add to my own collection one day!!!

Guardians of the Galaxy: Angela

So I managed to read the second volume of Guardians of the Galaxy today, too.  I was really looking forward to this one because it features Angela.  I'm not super familiar with her from Spawn, but I was interested to see what she would be like in Guardians of the Galaxy.

To that end, I wasn't disappointed.  Angela was pulled through some sort of temporal disturbance.  She gets into a fight with the Guardians of the Galaxy, who discovered her charging towards the Earth.  It turns out that she was amazed at the Earth's existence; she's heard stories of the Earth (much in the way we on Earth have heard stories of Heaven), and needed to see it with her own eyes (I thought that was an awesome story idea).  She ends up joining forces with the Guardians; in turn they are trying to help her get home.

I also really like how Gamora and Angela become friends.  They start off fighting one another, but in the end grow to respect each other.  That was a pretty fun story arc, too.

But like Cosmic Avengers, Angela suffered from some disjointed storytelling that made it a bit hard to follow.  I think what happened is that parts of the story took place in other comic lines.  So this graphic novel had only the specific Guardians of the Galaxy stories, which did not include those other parts.  That was really disappointing to me because I had no idea going in that parts of the story would be missing (especially since I'm not a huge Marvel Comics reader). 

But other than that, I enjoyed reading these two volumes.  I'm now quite excited for August when the movie comes out! 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

After finishing Matt Forbeck's Brave New World trilogy, I was heading out to camp and thought that Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane was the perfect book to take with me.  It isn't particularly long (181 pages), and I've heard really good things about it.  And there hasn't been a new Neil Gaiman book in quite sometime, so I was pretty excited to sit down and read it.

"This book is childhood."  That's how Emily May starts her review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  And that description is particularly apt.  This book, written for adults by an adult, is childhood.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane starts off in a relatively mundane way.  The narrator (I believe his name is George, but it only comes up near the end) is back in his home village to attend a funeral.  He has a couple of hours to kill, so he wanders back to his old neighbourhood and finds himself at the house of his old friend, Lettie Hempstock.  Sitting down by the pond which Lettie had convinced him years earlier was an ocean, he finds himself flooded in memories from the summer when he was seven years old.

The summer in question is definitely not mundane.  A man living in the narrator's house committed suicide, which woke up a being who should have stayed asleep.  Lettie takes the narrator to help her put the being back to sleep, but everything goes wrong.  The narrator's home life becomes a nightmare as that being follows him home.  The narrator knows that only Lettie and her family can save him and his family, but he has to get to her first. 

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is well written, in an almost whimsical manner, at odds with the darkness of the tale; coupled together, this book has a rather dream-like quality that suits it.  This is the story of the worst that can happen in childhood: the monsters are real and they really are after you. 

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader

I took a bit of an Ever World break in favour of some Batman; I'll be writing a column for work on books in the near future with Batman as my chosen topic so I thought I should read one or two more before it's due. I was also in a Neil Gaiman kind of mood so Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader was perfect.

The main story was really interesting. Everyone whom Batman touched, both friend and foe, were gathering for his funeral. And everyone was telling stories of how he both lived and died. Unfortunately these stories were all extremely different, leaving you with no real idea as to what was the truth. And over it all, the Caped Crusader himself watched, invisible along with a mysterious other. Whatever Happened was, in true Gaiman style, very intriguing; a fun read that leaves you trying to solve the mystery of what's going on right along with the Bat.

My version was the deluxe edition, which included a few other tales There four stories were all in widely differing art styles. It took me a bit to realize that they were also written by Gaiman. The first one, "A Black and White World," was pretty fun, featuring Batman and Joker rehearsing and acting out their roles for the comics; here they are just two guys who chose a career as comic book actors. "Pavane" was a strange story featuring Poison Ivy. It was a little hard to figure out (and, in my opinion, the worst story in this edition). Finally, "Original Sins" and "When is a Door" were related. "Original Sins" is the story of a man wanting to film a documentary on the human side of the villains; he is visited by Batman, who warns not to proceed. "When is a Door" is the interview of the Riddler. It was a bit confusing, but that was okay, because you do not go to the Riddler for answers. While not my favourite, this tale had the best ending.

All in all, I enjoyed reading Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader. This was by no means my favourite Batman graphic novel (or my favourite Gaiman stories), but altogether this was entertaining and makes you think.

Interworld

I started reading Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves' Interworld right before my trip to Toronto. I was hoping to have it finished before I went, but I was a bit too busy and ended up having to finish it on the plane.

Overall I thought it was okay. There was something missing from it, and I can't quite put my finger on what that was. The characters were awesome. The idea was great. And the plot seemed okay. But it just didn't have the usual spark that I associate with a Gaiman book.

The premise of the book is that a boy, Joey Harker, has the ability to travel between worlds. This is a power shared by all of his counterparts in the other worlds. And it is for this reason that all of his incarnations are hunted by two opposing factions who wish to harness this power to fuel their own dimension hopping ships. While many of the Harkers have succumbed, there are some who have escaped, banding together in an effort to stop either side from winning.

So yes, most of the characters in the book are Joey Harkers from other worlds. Only they are in most cases extremely unique individuals. There is Jo, the girl who has wings that are too small to fly with unless she is on a magic world, Jerzy, the boy who looks similar to Joey except that he has feathers rather than hair. Jakon, the wolf girl. The list goes on and on. Both male and female.

One of my major complaints was that we are only shown the magic side of the spectrum, personified by HEX. HEX is a group of wizards who have found a way to boil the Harkers down to their very essence, then sealing that essence into jars which are used to power their ships. They use magic spells and whatnot, and come from worlds with fairy creatures. On the other side of the spectrum is the Binary, who come from scientific worlds. They freeze the Harkers and scientifically extract their essence to power their spaceships. But other than one brief encounter, the book focuses exclusively on HEX.

My other complaint has to do with Michael Reaves. He wrote another book that I read (before I started this blog) called Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, which was an extremely bad book. (Basically, it made Maul look really bad. It started by saying how awesome he is, and then he spent the majority of the book failing to capture and kill a jedi padawan, a droid and some guy. The end was awesome, but it just couldn't make up for the rest of the book). So I was rather hesitant to pick up another book by him, but I made an exception because this is a Neil Gaiman. I am thinking that it is due to this bias that the book failed to shine in my eyes. It was fun, but it wasn't spectacular.

Eternals

I am not a huge Marvel reader. I know a bit about the main Marvel heroes, and that's about it. But when my friend bought me Eternals, which was written by Neil Gaiman, I was excited and couldn't wait to give it a try.

Right off the bat, I found it a little bit weird. Not the Eternals themselves. But the fact that Stark (Iron Man) was on the scene struck me as rather odd. From the outset, Eternals felt like it should be its own self-contained universe, and not part of the Marvel universe. (Apparently this sentiment was echoed by Gaiman himself. In the interview at the end of the story, Gaiman said he felt the same way when he first read Jack Kirby's original Eternals series).

But if you ignore the fact that the Eternals feel shoe-horned into a universe that they do not belong, you are left with a fun and very neat idea. The Eternals were created by the Celestials to protect and fix the machine that is the Earth. They are 100 perfect, immortal beings, each with different powers. They have been here since the beginning of time, and remain with us today. But about 30 years back, something happened and the Eternals lost their memories. Only one, Ikaris, has some idea of who they are, but to the world he sounds only like a raving lunatic. And so it is up to him to attempt to find the others and help them remember who they are before the Eternals' counterparts, the Deviants, succeed in reawakening the Celestial who has been imprisoned beneath the Earth.

The Graveyard Book

I started Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book yesterday. I had just finished my last midterm, and I was waiting for a friend. So I started reading. I was immediately drawn into the story, as only books by Neil Gaiman can do.

The Graveyard Book starts out on an incredibly sad note. The man Jack has murdered a man, woman, and their child. He has only to murder their baby and his job is done. But when he ascends to the baby's room, the crib is empty; the baby has escaped and wandered off into the night to the graveyard. While there, some of the ghosts take pity on the baby when his newly dead mother screams for someone to save the child. And so a dead couple by the name of Owens take in the baby, naming him Nobody.

The Graveyard Book follows Bod Owens' life growing up in the graveyard. Given the Freedom of the Graveyard, Bod is free to explore. But he must be careful to stay within the graveyard, for the man Jack still hunts him.

The Graveyard Book was a joy to read. Some of the chapters are stand alone short stories (Chapter 4: The Witch's Headstone" was first published separately), making for fun adventures along the plot. And the entire story was well put together, with everything coming nicely together at the end. A wonderful book from a wonderful storyteller!

Fragile Things

I'm really not sure why it took me so long to read this book. I've had it for quite some time, probably about a year now. I didn't read it because I wanted to save it. For what, I'm really not sure. So just before Christmas, I decided I was saving it for now.

Neil Gaiman is one of my favourite authors. I find his work fantastic, be it novels, short stories, poems or comics. Fragile Things was no exception. Most of the stories and poems were fantastc reads (that may have partially accounted for why it took me so long to read this book; I would finish reading a story, and then want to savour it).

I was talking to a friend about Fragile Things, and he said he didn't like it as much as Gaiman's last short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors. I don't exactly agree with that sentiment. They are different books with different feels to them, but they were both great. Both had some wonderful tales in them that are worth savouring. And both had poetry that I absolutely loved (The Day the Saucers Came was a particularly fun read. I'll have to try reading it out loud one day to see Gaiman is right and the poem becomes much funnier).

I also really liked reading both the introduction and the bonus interview with Gaiman that was included at the end of the book. The introduction is neat, as it explains why he wrote what he did, what inspired him, and random other facts that he thought were important (apparently the word yeti means that thing over there. I'l have to look this up later to see if it is true). Gaiman also spontaneously breaks into another story in the middle of his introductions (this was true in Smoke and Mirrors and it is true here as well). The conversation with Gaiman at the end of the book was just an enjoyable read in which Gaiman shared some facts about himself.

Fragile Things is a great read when you want something light, or something that you want a story in its entirety in just a few pages, rather than reading a novel. I thought it was a fantastic read, and I'm glad it didn't take me forever the way my last anthology escapade did.