Eternals

By Neil Gaiman

Graphic novel based on the Marvel comic book series by Jack Kirby. A bit hard to follow if you are totally unfamiliar with that series, which I was. So my summary may be a bit off.
As I understand it, back at the beginning of life on Earth, there were these giant robots/gods/ aliens called Celestials who came here and created two sets of beings, the Eternals and the Deviants/Changing People. The Eternals were perfect and immortal. Even if totally destroyed, they would be reassembled. The Deviants were mortal and able to change their appearance, but mostly they look monstrous. When apes evolved into humans, the humans were enslaved by the Deviants until freed by the Eternals or by the Celestials, I'm not sure which. And the Deviants retreated underground. The Eternals role on Earth is to protect, preserve and repair. What exactly they are supposed to protect, preserve and repair, I'm not sure. The Earth? Humanity? All life on Earth? Does that include the Deviants? Beats me.
Anyway, and this is where I got really confused, there's is this kid, Sprite. He has a TV show and he is really famous and popular. And he is immortal. I think he is one of the Eternals. Anyway, he was created a kid and he remained a kid and has been an eleven-year-old boy for a million years and he is sick of it. He wants to be a man in a man's body with all that the entails, mainly sex. So, somehow (if it was explained how, I missed it) Sprite causes all the Eternals to forget who they are and now they all believe they are mere humans living ordinary human lives. The effect of this is that Sprite is the only one who knows the truth and that he is now human (why & how did he become human?) and mortal and will finally achieve his dream of becoming a real man. Except it doesn't quite work out that way.
One of the Eternals has retained snippets of memory and knows that he is not a mere man. Dismissed by others as some kind of nut, Ike Harris (Ikaris) has managed to locate Mark Curry (Makkari). Now he has to convince Makkari that he is an Eternal, which turns out to be pretty easy when Ikaris ends up in the hospital under Makkari's care and Makkari can see for himself how quickly and unnaturally Ikaris heals, totally unlike a normal person would.
Ikaris gives Makkari a few leads on the whereabouts of some other unaware Eternals and Makkari sets out to rouse them. Ikaris is kidnapped from the hospital by a couple of Deviants. The Deviants, who can look human, are trying to figure out how to kill an Eternal and they are using every method they can think of, finally blasting Ikaris to atoms. They think they have succeeded, but they don't know that he is being reassembled by machinery at the Eternals' deserted base in Antarctica.
The two Deviants travel to San Francisco where they dig up a Celestial who was buried there a long time ago as some kind of punishment. They are thinking or hoping the Celestial will be on their side against humanity and the Eternals, once they get it reactivated. It will reactivate when exposed to sunlight, apparently. Does this have something to do with the Sprite plot? I'm not sure. I know he shows up at the San Francisco location and gets captured by the two Deviants.
Meanwhile Makkari and the reassembled Ikaris don't want the Celestial reanimated. So they also show up at the SF location and Makkari has some kind of melt down and the robot alien god Celestial thing stands up. But that is all it does. It just stands up.
Then a horde of Deviants show up at the base in Antarctica, to challenge the few Eternals who have regained their memories and their powers. Makkari stands up to them and earns their respect, I didn't really get that part. And the head Eternal tracks down Sprite and kills him for causing a lot of the troubles.

This was a really disjointed story, too much going on, and if you are not familiar with the back story, pretty confusing.

The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains

By Neil Gaiman

The small man has some guilt he needs to deal with. His beautiful daughter disappeared and he leaped to the conclusion that she had run away. He didn't find out for a year that she was dead. He spent that year hating her. He is haunted by his failure and his misjudgment of his daughter, Flora.
Ten years have passed and now he is on a quest. He needs to find a certain cave on the Isle of Skye, a cave said to be filled with gold, there for the taking. He sets off on the journey and hires one Calum MacInnes as guide. Calum has been to the cave once.
As the journey progresses, the details of Flora's demise are gradually revealed. And the man's journey isn't just about the search for gold, it is also about the search for justice.

This isn't a long story, about 75 pages. But it is a very interesting and captivating tale. The truth is slowly revealed little by little and the tale changes from a search for gold to a search for revenge. An unforgettable folk tale.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

By Neil Gaiman

The little boy lived in a small town in England in a large house with his parents and his sister. Due to an economic downturn, his parents decided to take in a boarder, meaning the boy had to give up his room and move in with his sister. The boarder was an opal miner who came to England to invest his own and his friends' money. Instead he gambled it all away. He then stole his landlord's car and drove to the nearby outskirts of town to a pond and killed himself.  The dad received a phone call informing him of the whereabouts of the car and he and his son walked there. And that is where the boy met Lettie Hempstock, a girl who lived on the farm where the pond was located. And Lettie Hempstock took the boy to places that he never should have been and accidentally caused the boy a lot of unnecessary problems, including being deliberately almost killed by his own father.

If you read the reviews about this book, you will find widespread acclaim about what a wonderful story it is. I may be the only person to review it who was not enchanted by this odd and disturbing tale. Not being of a philosophical mind set nor caring much for mythology, there was much about the book that just didn't appeal, especially the Hempstocks, the three godlike women at the center of the story. I mean, what are they doing there, on a farm in rural England? Just hanging around pretending to be human? I didn't get it. What I also didn't get was why a father who never abused his children would suddenly attempt to murder his only son. That just seemed out of character to me. Some may say he was under evil influences and maybe so. That just didn't ring true to me.
It's an OK story but not a keeper.

The Graveyard Book

By Neil Gaiman

Nobody Owens is just a normal kid. Except he lives in a graveyard and his foster parents are ghosts, as are most of his friends and companions.
As a toddler, Bod's whole family was killed by the man Jack, who missed little Bod because Bod had wandered outside. But Jack is still determined to destroy the whole family and so is trying to track down Bod. But Bod has found refuge in the graveyard where the ghosts take him in and where an undead man agrees to be his guardian.
Life outside the graveyard is dangerous, especially for Bod with Jack continuing to look for him. But life inside the graveyard isn't exactly safe either as Bod discovers when he encounters the Sleer in an ancient barrow or when Bod is snatched by ghouls intending to eat him for supper. But throughout it all, Bod comes out on top and learns to cope not only with the world of the grave but with the world outside also, dangers and all.

This was a fun and interesting read, as Bod lives with a foot in either world. It isn't really a novel, but more a series of short stories about the life of Bod. I enjoyed it tremendously.

American Gods

By Neil Gaiman

There's a war brewing in America between the old gods who came to America with the immigrants from all over the world and the new gods of technology, entertainment, finance, etc. Caught in the middle of it all is Shadow, a guy with a history of bad luck who has just gotten out of prison and lost his wife in car crash.
He has been brought into the god war by Odin as a kind of protege of his and in the process of Odin's trying to organize his fellow old timers to take a stand against the pushy new American gods, Shadow finds himself up to his neck in various human incarnations of these old timey gods, helped out on occasion by his dead wife that Shadow accidentally reanimated when he tossed a magic coin into her grave.

This was a very interesting story with lots of old mythology and strange old gods and creepy new gods and poor Shadow trying to land on his feet in the midst of all the tumult. A very engrossing story and an enjoyable read.

Neverwhere

By Neil Gaiman

Richard Mayhew is a successful young man living in London. He has a fiancee, Jessica, who is ambitious and very sure of herself and not too popular with Richard's friends. Her true character is revealed one weekend night when she and Richard stumble across a young, injured street person and Jessica sees no reason to involve herself in the injured woman's troubles. Richard, despite Jessica's protests, helps the girl, whose name is Door. Richard, involved with Door, fails to show up to an important dinner with Jessica and her boss and Jessica breaks off the engagement.
Trying to help Door get somewhere safe, Richard is introduced to Door's world, which is called London Below. It seems there is a vast other city, invisible to London Above, where people of strange appearance and strange abilities live out their lives in the sewers, subways and basements of London Above. Richard delivers Door safely but when he tries to go back to his normal life he finds that he has become unreal to it. He no longer exists and everyone who knew him has forgotten him. His credit cards are invalid, his bank account has vanished, his apartment has been rented and he is forced to retreat to London Below just to survive.
Tracking down Door, Richard is desperate to get his old life back. Once he finds her, he becomes involved in her problems which could cost him his life as Door is a marked woman, being hunted by two ruthless and very creepy killers, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar. Door leads Richard on a perilous adventure through the filthy, gloomy byways of London Below as they flee the two deadly assassins and Richard struggles to get back to reality and London Above.

This book started out as a series on British TV. The landmarks and locales of London play an important part in the story and were probably a lot more meaningful to British viewers than they could be to a person who is not familiar with the sights and locales mentioned. For example, the angel Islington, which is an angel named Islington in the book which is probably a lot more charming and amusing if you know, which I did not when reading the book, that there used to be, long ago, an inn in Islington named the Angel and that there is no actual angel in Islington. So, yeah, those kind of details totally meant nothing to me, unfamiliar as I am with the streets of London and its surrounds.
But not only that, the whole depiction of the street people lifestyle just didn't appeal. Bit of a spoiler here: but when Richard gets his normal life back he finds himself bored and dissatisfied. I couldn't relate, better boredom that eating alley cats and wearing the same unwashed clothing for weeks at a time. Give me a hot shower, a soft bed, clean clothes and a good meal over excitement any day. I found the characters too grubby, too creepy and too elitist. Nevertheless, Gaiman presents a fascinating netherworld full of strangeness and strange people and it is a lot of fun to picture such dwelling places beneath the streets of our big cities, as the book makes clear that all the big cities of the world have their hidden counterpart just out of sight. So, though it had it problems for me, I still liked reading about Richard, Door and London Below.

New Words

Arbalests, mangonels, trebuchets, glaives and knobkerries: An arbalest is a crossbow; a mangonel is a catapult; a trebuchet is also a catapult; a glaive is a long-handled blade or a broadsword; and a knobkerry is a club. 'He made his own, out of whatever he could find, or take, or steal, parts of cars and rescued bits of machinery, which he turned into hooks and shivs, crossbows and arbalests, small mangonels and trebuchets for breaking walls, cudgels, glaives and knobkerries.'

Inhume: to bury; place in a grave or tomb. '"We should butcher the bitch. Annul, cancel, inhume, and amortize her."'

Grimoires: a grimoire is a book of instructions in the use of magic, especially summoning demons. 'But the shelves were filled with a host of other things: tennis rackets, hockey sticks, umbrellas, a spade, a notebook computer, a wooden leg, several mugs, dozens of shoes, pairs of binoculars, a small log, six glove puppets, a lava lamp, various CDs, records (LPs, 45s, and 78s), cassette tapes and eight-tracks, dice, toy cars, assorted pairs of dentures, watches, flashlights, four garden gnomes of assorted sizes (two fishing, one of them mooning, the last smoking a cigar), piles of newspapers, magazines, grimoires, three-legged stools, a box of cigars, a plastic nodding-head Alsatian, socks ... the room was a tiny empire of lost property.'

Fuliginous: pertaining to soot; sooty. 'At the apex of the bridge, another monk was waiting for them: Brother Fuliginous.' [Brother Fuliginous is one of the Black Friars.]

Kris: a double-edged, wavy-bladed knife or short sword designed primarily for thrusting. 'It was made of a bronze-colored metal; the blade was long, and it curved like a kris, sharp on one side, serrated on the other; there were faces carved into the side of the haft, which was green with verdigris, and decorated with strange designs and odd curlicues.'

Good Omens

By Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This is a story of the end of the world, loosely based on the New Testament book of Revelation. This book should probably not be read by devout Christians unless they have a good sense of humor.
So the bad guys (the devil and his minions) have delivered a baby boy to a hospital run by the nuns of the Chattering Order of St. Beryl. This baby, the Antichrist and the son of Satan, is to be switched with the newborn son of the American Cultural Attaché, where he will be raised to fulfill his satanic destiny. Instead he is mistakenly placed with Mr. & Mrs. Young, a local English couple, the nun in charge of the switch has somehow mistaken Mr. Young for the American Attaché. Neither the good guys or the bad guys realize what has happened for quite some time.
Years pass, neither side aware that the kid being raised to be Antichrist is just and ordinary boy and that the real Antichrist is enjoying the normal, mundane life of the typical active kid. Neither side realizes anything is wrong until the child's eleventh birthday. On that date, a hell hound is to appear at the Antichrist's side to serve him as he wishes. Both sides are watching the Attaché's boy, waiting for the hound to appear. It never does, because it has gone to be with Adam, the real Antichrist, who thinks of himself as just a boy. Because Adam has wanted a little scruffy dog for a long time, that is how the hell hound appears to him and the hound embraces the life of a mutt with a great deal of appreciation, finding chasing cats and rabbits a lot more fun than devouring damned souls:

And then there were cats, thought Dog. He'd surprised the huge ginger cat from next door and had attempted to reduce it to cowering jelly by means of the usual glowing stare and deep-throated growl, which had always worked on the damned in the past. This time they earned him a whack on the nose that had made his eyes water. Cats, Dog considered, were clearly a lot tougher than lost souls. He was looking forward to a further cat experiment, which he'd planned would consist of jumping around and yapping excitedly at it. It was a long shot, but it might just work.

Just as Dog is starting to really enjoy life as a mutt instead of as a hell hound, Adam starts to come into his power and realize he can change the world to please himself and thus bring about Armageddon. The armies of the Lord and the armies of Satan begin to align themselves for the final battle. Maybe the end is inevitable. But two old boys, two old adversaries, have decided they are going to do their damnedest (in one case) and their best (in the other case) to stop it. Because after all these millennia of living among humans, they have decided they quite like it and that they would like very much for thing to just muddle on as they always have. So the demon Crowley and the angel Aziraphale, old enemies and old friends, join together to try to thwart the end of the world. They are helped by a cast of unlikely characters, including Anathema Device, a witch and the descendant of the prophetess, Agnes Nutter, who predicted in exact detail every occurrence of the time of the end; Shadwell and Newton, both witchfinders in the Witchfinders Army; and Madame Tracy, a woman of loose morals and a Medium.

This story is just a whole lot of fun. Every page is jammed packed with originality. There are so many crazy characters like the four horsemen (bikers) of the Apocalypse who are the Real Hell's Angels and who run across the biker gang who call themselves the Hell's Angels. I have read this book several times and I expect I will read it several times more. It is always interesting and fun and irreverent and just one of the best books I have ever read.

For more reviews of Good Omens see Booklore.

Anansi Boys

By Neil Gaiman

This book is the sequel to American Gods but it stands on its own so it is not necessary to read the first to enjoy the second.

Fat Charlie Nancy has a problematic father. His dad is a joker, a fan of the practical joke. He made Fat Charlie's boyhood so embarrassing and painful that even though Fat Charlie is planning to get married he is not planning to invite his father. His father is the one who saddled him with the nickname Fat Charlie even though Fat Charlie isn't fat. When Fat Charlie hears that his father has died, he isn't exactly heartbroken. Still he goes to his dad's funeral and there he is told that his dad wasn't actually human. Fat Charlie's dad, Mr. Nancy, was a petty god, Anansi, the personification of spider, an African trickster god.
Seems like, back at the beginning, the animal god Tiger was in charge of all the stories. Tiger's stories are full of hunting, killing, blood and strife. Then Anansi gained custody of all the stories and stories became full of cunning and tricks and imagination instead. Tiger still wants to get the stories back and he hates Anansi.
Fat Charlie also finds out that he has a brother, Spider. Spider is everything that Fat Charlie is not. Spider has godly powers like their dad, Spider is cool, Spider is attractive, Spider gets everything he wants. Compared to Spider, Fat Charlie is a loser.
Spider shows up at Fat Charlie's and turns his life upside down. He gets Charlie in trouble at work and Charlie's nasty boss frames Charlie for the embezzlement the boss has been committing. Spider dates Charlie's girl and sleeps with her, something that she never let Charlie do.
Seeking to get Spider out of his life, Charlie makes a deal with the bird god and he gives her the bloodline of Anansi for her own. Foolishly he doesn't realize that this includes himself.
Charlie finds himself in jail for embezzlement and both Charlie and Spider are being attacked by hordes of birds every time they venture outside. A storm of birds swoops down on Spider and carries him off and he ends up being hunted by Tiger. It is up to Charlie to straighten out the mess, find his voice and discover what it means to be the son of the trickster god, Anansi.

This is meant to be a fun book, for the most part, and it is. Some of the funniest stuff is Charlie's comments about his girlfriend's mother. There are some folk stories featuring Anasi and Tiger which are pretty boring but I guess they are included to illustrate the two characters personalities and history. They might be interesting to people who like folk stories and mythology. The novel isn't all fun and games though. The part about Fat Charlie's murderous boss and Spider's struggles with the bird god and Tiger are pretty grim. Spider gets his tongue ripped out and is tied down for Tiger to kill. Despite these darker notes, this is a good, often funny and entertaining story, an enjoyable read.

Review by Kirkus Reviews.

New Word:
Lubricious: "Fat Charlie realized that he knew the man in his dream, knew him from somewhere, and he also realized that this would irritate him for the rest of the day if he let it, like a snag of dental floss caught between two teeth, or the precise difference between the words lubricious and lascivious, it would sit there, and it would irritate him."
Lubricious means offensively displaying or intended to arouse sexual desire; or having a smooth or slippery quality.