Sunday, November 04, 2007 , terribly early in the morning

Neil Gaiman

I wouldn’t say that I’m a huge fan of the “fantasy” literary genre, yet I loved the entire Harry Potter series, the “His Dark Materials” trilogy, anything by Christopher Moore, and “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”.  Amazon.com offers book recommendations based on the titles you’ve previously purchased, and I must have purchased enough fantasy titles to prompt a recommendation of the book “Good Omens” by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett.  I read it, and I mostly enjoyed it, but it was very light and a bit silly (in a bad way).  It didn’t help that it was the first book I read after finishing “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell”, so anything would seem simplistic in comparison.  I felt the authors had some potential, however, so I took a chance and purchased two more books by Neil Gaiman, “American Gods” and “Anansi Boys”.

It must have been Terry Pratchett who kept “Good Omens” from being deep and complex, because Neil Gaiman, by himself, writes pretty heavy books.  “American Gods” was an enjoyable story about the old, traditional gods of the world (like Odin, Ganesha, Zeus, Anansi, etc.) having a battle with the “new gods”—media, the Internet, etc.  The main character was a human named Shadow, who was hired to be Odin’s bodyguard.  I don’t think I’d recommend the book to anyone else, as I didn’t love it, but I enjoyed it.  “Anansi Boys” was a sort of sequel to “American Gods”, and I enjoyed it much more.  I could recommend it to someone looking for an unusual read.  The spider god Anansi dies, and leaves two adult sons, one human, and one god.  The twist is that they’d never met prior to their father’s death.  Being a bit of a trickster, the god starts to take over the life of his human brother, and lots of things go awry.  It was amusing and I enjoyed the small number of characters.  “American Gods” had so many characters that few of them were developed.

The one main observation I can make about Neil Gaiman’s writing is that his female characters are poorly developed and rather cliched.  That sort of bugged me, but I was able to overlook it through two novels.  I don’t think I will be reading any more of them, though.

The next book on my nightstand is also of the fantasy genre, and is also an Amazon.com recommendation:  ”The Good Fairies of New York” by Martin Millar.  The description of the book sounded fabulous, and I really hope it lives up to my expectations.  If it doesn’t, I’m going to have to start reading a book which arrived today, ”All the Math You’ll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide”.  I really hope I don’t have to do that.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 11/04 at 05:49 AM
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