Gaiman, Neil Books

The Graveyard Book

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

An enchanting read 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This book takes the reader to the world of Bod Owens, a young boy who is orphaned and taken under the protective wing of the inhabitants of a graveyard. The ghosts and creatures who raise and protect him demonstrate the kindness, love, warmth, and wisdom that we all hope to receive from a family.

I purchased the book after hearing Mr. Gaiman give a talk in which he described the original inspiration for the story and read an excerpt. After hearing his reading I could not wait to read the book and was not disappointed.

The story offers so many gifts - it is funny, poignant, thrilling, scary,
and mysterious. I was sorry that the story had to end, and that is something that I wish I could say about every book I have read.

Editorial Review:

Nobody Owens, known to his friends as Bod, is a normal boy.

He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a sprawling graveyard, being raised and educated by ghosts, with a solitary guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor of the dead.

There are dangers and adventures in the graveyard for a boy-an ancient Indigo Man beneath the hill, a gateway to a desert leading to an abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible menace of the Sleer.

But if Bod leaves the graveyard, then he will come under attack from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family. . . .

Beloved master storyteller Neil Gaiman returns with a luminous new novel for the audience that embraced his New York Times bestselling modern classic coraline. Magical, terrifying, and filled with breathtaking adventures, the graveyard book is sure to enthrall readers of all ages.

The 13 Clocks

James Thurber

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold. His hands were as cold as his smile, and almost as cold as his heart. He wore gloves when he was asleep, and he wore gloves when he was awake, which made it difficult for him to pick up pins or coins or the kernels of nuts, or to tear the wings from nightingales.

So begins James Thurber’s sublimely revamped fairy tale, The 13 Clocks, in which a wicked Duke who imagines he has killed time, and the Duke’s beautiful niece, for whom time seems to have run out, both meet their match, courtesy of an enterprising and very handsome prince in disguise. Readers young and old will take pleasure in this tale of love forestalled but ultimately fulfilled, admiring its upstanding hero (”He yearned to find in a far land the princess of his dreams, singing as he went, and possibly slaying a dragon here and there”) and unapologetic villain (”We all have flaws,” the Duke said. “Mine is being wicked”), while wondering at the enigmatic Golux, the mysterious stranger whose unpredictable interventions speed the story to its necessarily happy end.

Coraline

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 358 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring....

In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one window and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close, The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.

Only it's different....

At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.

Performed by Neil Gaiman
With original music by The Gothic Archies

Stardust

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 351 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Cliched, cliched, cliched 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

*Mild spoilers alert*

One of the things I always say about this book is that it is the most extraordinarily okay book I have ever read. It isn't bad, but it isn't particularly good, either. It is just completely and sincerely okay.

The fact of the matter is, the only thing that keeps it out of the bad category is Gaiman's talent. The author does have a way with words, and develops some amazing imagery. That being said, the story itself is cliched and predictable. From the very moment I read "Tristran Thorn, Tristran Thorn, soon to meet his true love's scorn," the story was over for me. And of course Tristran then met a girl who scorns him. The "obstacles" Tristran and Yvaine face are obstacles that they are obviously going to overcome and simply leave the reader bored rather than interested to read more.

The truly frustrating part was that there were tantalizing glimpses of true talent and innovation, that I desperately wished Gaiman had developed (such as the sky pirates) but they were gone as quickly as they had come and the story was back to another "adult fairy tale" cliche.

Gaiman is clearly a talented man, but Stardust does not leave me wanting to read anything more by him. If I could predict the end of this one almost from the beginning (this one, that everyone seems to love and that was made into a movie) why should I bother reading another?

Editorial Review:

Catch a fallen star . . .

Tristran thorn promised to bring back a fallen star. So he sets out on a journey to fulfill the request of his beloved, the hauntingly beautiful Victoria Forester—and stumbles into the enchanted realm that lies beyond the wall of his English country town. Rich with adventure and magic, Stardust is one of master storyteller Neil Gaiman's most beloved tales, and the inspiration for the hit movie.

The Dangerous Alphabet

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

not quite there 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

It is hard for me to give anything by Gaiman less than 4 or 5 stars, but this one just doesn't cut it. Maybe if it had been intended for 8 and above rather than the suggested 4 to 8 age range - but as done, it is way too macabre for the audience.

The couplets forming the text of the book are not all as sharp as I would expect from the talented writer - and if you just read them straight through, they don't form the complete picture as a poem that they should. The story is jagged and incomplete.

The drawings by Gris Grimly are superior, but also way off base for younger children. Each page is filled with gruesome details, some are fine and even fun to spy - such as a worm coming out of an apple or bones revealed by an x-ray machine. But others include blood coming from the wrists of a child manacled to a wall, children in stew pots and chained by their necks.

While I think older children - those able to more clearly distinguish fantasy from reality - and adults can enjoy this book, I would not give it to a child under 8 or 9. This alphabet is just a tad too dangerous for the wee ones.

Editorial Review:

A is for Always, that's where we embark . . .

Two children, treasure map in hand, and their pet gazelle sneak past their father, out of their house, and into a world beneath the city, where monsters and pirates roam.

Will they find the treasure? Will they make it out alive?

The Dangerous Alphabet is a tale of adventure, piracy, danger, and heroism told in twenty-six alphabetical lines—although even the alphabet is not to be relied upon here. A delightfully dangerous journey from national bestselling author Neil Gaiman and the monstrously talented Gris Grimly, The Dangerous Alphabet is sure to captivate and chill young readers.

InterWorld

Neil Gaiman, Michael Reaves

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Debt of gratitude 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Don't the authors owe an large debt of gratitude to Diane Wynne Jones for this particular multiverse concept? Readers might prefer her Chrestomanci books.The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Volume 1: Charmed Life / The Lives of Christopher Chant

Editorial Review:

An astounding tale of adventure, danger, magic, science, friendship, spaceships, and, oh yeah, the battle to save all the people in all the worlds in all possible dimensions.

Joey Harker isn't a hero.

In fact, he's the kind of guy who gets lost in his own house.

But one day, Joey gets really lost. He walks straight out of his world and into another dimension.

Joey's walk between worlds makes him prey to armies of magic and science, both determined to harness Joey's power to travel between the dimensions. The only thing standing in their way is Joey—or, more precisely, an army of Joeys, all from different dimensions and all determined to save the worlds.

Now Joey must make a choice: return to the life he knows or join the battle to the end.

The Wolves in the Walls

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Lang lai le! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I loved this book. The illustrations are fantastic. It's funny, but I recently learn the Chinese have an expression, "lang lai le." This is said when there is an unpleasant noise, such as bad singing. It means "the wolves will come out." I would recommend this book for middle school age kids as it is rather scary. I also loved Gaiman's novel, Coraline. I would recommend also the Visions in Poetry version of The Raven illustrated by Ryan Price. Prices illustrations are very similar to McKean's. In fact I feel like it is Price's illustrations that prop up the poem.

I'm 26 and I bought this for myself...and I'm not ashamed! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I love Neil Gaiman and I love Dave Mckean, back from the first edition of Coraline. I bought the book for myself and I'm not ashamed. I love children's literature and I love Neil Gaiman's writing & Mckean's artwork. There is such a Tim Burton-ish, Roald Dahl-esque quality which occurs when these two team up; it's a haunting beauty. I think the story is fabulous, not too scary for young kids, & the art is breathtaking. Beautiful elaborate drawings.
A+

Editorial Review:

Lucy hears sneaking, creeping,
crumpling noises
coming from inside
the walls.

She is sure there are
wolves living in
the walls
of her house.

M Is for Magic

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

M is for Morbid 2 out of 5 stars.
7 of 14 people found this review helpful.

This small anthology contains 10 short stories and one bad poem. It clearly presents itself as a children's book (for "ages 10 and up" according to the flap), and many of the stories were apparently selected for elements that many superficially associate with Children's Literature, such as child protagonists, a sentient toy, a heroic animal, a mythical creature or some nursery rhyme references.

However, the pretence that this is a Children's Book is a cynical marketing deception. With the possible exception of "The Witch's Headstone", none of the stories here were originally written for children, nor have any been substantially altered for that audience. I did notice that at least one story ("Troll Bridge"), had received some very minor editing to remove some of the more blatant adult language and references (which in no way detracts from the tale anything of value, IMHO), but it remains a highly adult-themed (and disturbing) tale.

But the most inappropriate thing about this book is its promotion of suicidal ideas. The worst offender is "October in the Chair," which starts with a boy running away from home, and ends with his decision to throw away his life in pursuit of the sanctuary of the graveyard. This could be read as a horror story - and I suppose a healthy child would indeed be horrified by it. But it does not read as horror. It reads as a dark fantasy -- an advertisement for child suicide.

Suicidal themes are further explored in "Troll Bridge," which is not quite so bad as "October..." in that it at least suggests that a child might want to wait until he has some experience of life - which mainly means experience of sex - before he ultimately and inevitably decides to throw away his worthless life.

"Witch's Headstone," the last story in the volume, also adds to the theme, but indirectly. It is about young boy who lives in a graveyard under the protection of its apparently-benevolent ghosts. The graveyard appears as a (somewhat bleak) sanctuary, while the living world outside is portrayed as evil and threatening. I do not object to this positive portrayal of a graveyard sanctuary, since there is no indication that our hero got to this juncture via suicide (in fact, he is refered to as the "live boy"). The problem arises because this appears in the same volume as "October...", and the situations are so similar that it almost that it might be a sequel. It seems to resolve the ambiguous ending of "October..." in favor of the idea that the suicidal act at the end of that story was a good idea.

Nonetheless, I might have thought that "...Headstone," viewed strictly on its own (rather than as a follow-up to "October..."), was a tolerable kids' horror fantasy, containing some genuinely imaginative and creepy situations. However, it contains yet another terrible flaw. One character, who the author clearly intends as sympathetic, is the ghost of a witch who, as revenge for her execution, curses an entire village to a painful death. Wait ... sorry - it was not quite the ENTIRE village. "Just those that watched me get burned and drowned," explains this mass-murderess (with a shrug) when our boy hero inquires on this issue. That seems to make it okay in Gaiman's mind. In short not only does Gaiman suggest (in "October...") that our kids ought to kill themselves, but he also suggests (in "... Headstone") that they might want to slaughter half the community on their way out, on the flimsiest of justifications.

Setting aside the volume's unsuitability for kids, and viewing it simply as a slim collection of adult stories, it remains a mixed bag. "The Price," about a mysterious stray cat, is the best story here. Others, such as "Troll Bridge" are memorably horrific and disturbing, though I hesitate to call them good. Still others, such as "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds" and "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge", are just pointless tales that try too hard to be clever, and fail. Many of the stories (even "The Price") are underdeveloped - Gaiman seems to think that not finishing or adequately developing a story is a good way to create an illusion of depth. Almost all of the stories here can be found in earlier, larger, collections (The best ones are from SMOKE AND MIRRORS, while others are from FRAGILE THINGS). The only advantage to this slim volume is that it spares the reader exposure to some of Gaiman's more degraded dark fantasies.

Still, the stench of moral decay is not absent here, and virtually all the stories display a disturbing indifference to morality. "...Blackbirds" celebrates the principle that one must "look out for number one." When, in "Troll Bridge", the hero offers first his sister, then his girlfriend, to the troll in order to ransom himself, there is never any clear indication that the author feels that he ought to have behaved otherwise. "...Ponti Bridge" celebrates the glorious achievements of a con-man. "Sunbird" seems to celebrate, as though it were merely funny, a happy-go-lucky rascal who casually murders all his friends (for unexplained motives) in the course of obtaining immortality for himself.

"The Price" is the closest thing to an exception. The protagonist is a coward, as always, but the same cannot be said for the mysterious, self-sacrificing Cat who suffers for his sins. It is the only story here that strongly suggests the possibility of Good as well as Evil, and that is why it is my favorite.

Editorial Review:

Stories to delight, enchant, and surprise you.

Bestselling author and master storyteller Neil Gaiman here presents a breathtaking collection of tales that may chill or amuse readers—but always embrace the unexpected:

• A teenage boy who has trouble talking to girls finds himself at a rather unusual party.
• A sinister jack-in-the-box haunts the lives of the children who owned it.
• A boy raised in a graveyard makes a discovery and confronts the much more troubling world of the living.
• A stray cat fights a nightly battle to protect his adopted family from a terrible evil.

These eleven stories illuminate the real and the fantastic, and will be welcomed with great joy by Neil Gaiman's many fans as well as by readers coming to his work for the first time.

Coraline Movie Tie-in Edition

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

"The message is this. Don't go through the door" 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Nobody can drench a book in creepy, dank atmosphere like Neil Gaiman -- and it doesn't matter if it's a kid's book.

And "Coraline" -- now being released as a movie -- is no exception to Gaiman's track record. It's a haunting little dark fairy tale full of decayed apartments, dancing rats and eerie soulless doppelgangers, as well as a gutsy heroine who finds herself in this ominous "other" world.

Newly moved into an aged apartment, Coraline (not "Caroline" is bored. Her parents are too busy to do anything with her, and her neighbors are either insane or boring.

It's the sort of relentlessly dull world that any little girl would want to escape from -- until Coraline does. She encounters a formerly bricked-up door that leads into an apartment in another world, which looks eerily like her own. In fact, it's so similar that she has a taloned, button-eyed "other mother" and matching "other father," as well as a chorus of singing, dancing rats and magical toys.

At first Coraline is fascinated by the other world, especially since her other parents are very attentive. Then she finds her real parents sealed inside a mirror. With the help of a sarcastic cat, Coraline ventures back into the other world. But with her parents and a trio of dead children held hostage, Coraline's only hope is to gamble with her own freedom -- and she'll be trapped forever if she fails.

Without Neil Gaiman's touch, "Coraline" would just be another story about a kid who learns to appreciate her parents. But he infuses this story with a dark fairy-tale vibe -- decayed apartments, dead children in a mirror, beetles, disembodied hands, monsters that cling to the wall with souls in their grip, and rats that sing about how "we were here before you rose, we will be here when you fall."

That dark, cobwebby atmosphere clings to the increasingly nightmarish plot, as Coraline navigates a world where the other mother has every advantage. And Gaiman's wordcraft is exquisitely horrible -- the other mother's hands are compared to spiders, her hair to undersea tentacles. And the fate of the other father is a magnificently ghastly thing.

He even infuses poetry into the horror ("A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten"), and a fair amount of macabre humour ("I swear it on my own mother's grave." "Does she have a grave?" "Oh yes. I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back").

Coraline herself is a wonderful little heroine -- strong, sensible, self-sufficient but still fairly freaked out about what is happening around her. The sarcastic cat is a wonderful counterpoint. And the other mother is the stuff of nightmares -- she's utterly inhuman and merciless -- who "wants something to love. Something that isn't her. She might want something to eat as well."

Neil Gaiman creates eerie, slightly warped worlds like nobody else, and he does an exquisitely horrible job in "Coraline." Just never go through the door.

Editorial Review:

When Coraline explores her new home, she steps through a door and into another house just like her own . . . except that it's different. It's a marvelous adventure until Coraline discovers that there's also another mother and another father in the house. They want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to keep her forever!

Coraline must use all of her wits and every ounce of courage in order to save herself and return home.

Coraline: The Movie Collector's Edition

Neil Gaiman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Coraline went exploring one day . . .

Her family has just moved to a completely new town, and so Coraline already feels a bit strange. In her new house there is one door that opens onto a brick wall. At least, it does until one day the bricks are gone and Coraline finds herself stepping over the threshold into another house . . . a house that's just like hers.

At first things appear marvelous in this other house. The food is better. The toy box is filled with windup angels that flutter about, books whose pictures crawl and shimmer, and little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother and another father—and they want Coraline to be their little girl and stay with them forever. They want to change her and never let her go.

Other children are also trapped, as lost souls behind a mirror, and Coraline is their only hope. She will have to find a way to meet the other mother's challenge in order to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.