***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
Coraline
Neil Gaiman
Harper Perennial
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****
DESCRIPTION: Young Coraline's family has just moved into one floor of a run-down old house. The upstairs neighbor claims he's training a mouse circus. The
elderly sisters downstairs raise terriers and speak endlessly of their bygone days on the stage. Her parents are wrapped up in their jobs, hardly noticing her coming
and going. Left mostly to her own devices, she starts exploring... and finds a peculiar door in the drawing room that leads to a brick wall. One night, she follows a
strange shadow to the door, and finds that it now opens onto a hallway. Following it, she discovers another flat just like her own - only not quite. Here, Coraline
meets her "Other Mother," a paper-pale woman with black buttons for eyes. She offers the lonely girl all the love and attention that her real parents haven't given
her in ages... but at what cost?
REVIEW: This movie formed the basis of the 2009 animated film of the same name. I saw the movie first, and there are significant differences. The overall
creepy nature of the Other Mother's world remains the same, as does the independence and courage of the heroine herself. Considering that I find Gaiman a very hit-
and-miss author, this one falls in the "hit" category, with the strangeness augmenting the story rather than bogging it down. While I personally preferred the movie,
I could still enjoy this book.
You might also enjoy:
The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens are pulled into a world where magic and elder gods still reign supreme)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury, YA Fiction - Two small-town boys discover a terrible secret behind a traveling October carnival)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - When a boy finds a faerie prince in the garden, he is pulled into a brewing interdimensional conflict)
Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold! (Terry Brooks, Fiction - A burned-out lawyer buys a magic kingdom from a catalog)
The Stoneheart trilogy (Charlie Fletcher, YA Fiction - An act of vandalism plunges a London boy into the unseen war between the city's statues and gargoyles)
Eccentric Circles (Rebecca Lickiss, Fiction - A woman discovers a doorway to a fairy world through the back door of her inherited cottage)
Un Lun Dun (China Miéville, YA Fiction - Two girls find themselves in the surreal "abcity" mirror of London)
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica (James A. Owen, YA Fiction - Three London men, soon to be famous authors, cross over into the Archipelago of Dreams, inspiration of myth and story since prehistoric times)
Others See Us (William Sleator, YA Fiction - A spill in a toxic swamp gives a teen boy telepathy, plunging him into a world of intrigue and paranoia)
The 100 Cupboards trilogy (N. D. Wilson, YA Fiction - A boy discovers magical cupboard doors to other worlds, and unwittingly unleashes a terrible danger)
Coraline (Two-Disc Collector's Edition w/ 3D)
(2009 animated movie DVD)
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Neverwhere
Neil Gaiman
HarperTorch
Fiction, Fantasy
*****
DESCRIPTION: Richard Mayhew had an ordinary life in London. He worked in a prestigious securities office. He was engaged to Jessica, a proper kind of lady. He had
everything a person could want in an ordinary world... and then, one evening, he finds a strange, wounded girl on the sidewalk, and everything changes.
Door is the last of the prestigious Portico family of London Below, the vast network of tunnels and times that stands beneath and apart from everyday London Above. Chased by the
devilish hounds Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, who slew her family, she fled to London Above with the last of her strength... falling right into Richard's path.
To deal with those of London Below is to lose one's place in London Above, and though Richard but briefly helped her, he finds himself pulled into the underworld's strange
dangers, becoming little more than a ghost among friends and co-workers. Now, Door must find out who wanted her family slaughtered and why they still pursue her, and Richard must
survive the dangers of London Below if he is ever to return to the life he knew.
REVIEW: Long ago, I saw the six-part British TV miniseries based on this book (or possibly the book was based on the series), but never knew who wrote it until
recently. I wasn't as impressed with Stardust, another Neil Gaiman work, as I should have been, but I'd enjoyed the miniseries so much I gave it a go. Happily, it proved
to be an excellent tale. London Below is a surreal but oddly believable world, filled with stories that are hinted at but never overexplained. The characters were far more
engaging than the ones in Stardust, as was the story, proving that Gaiman isn't just a writer of great ideas without people or plots to back them up. It is possible that I was
reading into it stuff I remembered from the miniseries, but it still held my interest. A great, dark, original urban fantasy.
You might also enjoy:
The Remnants series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - The last human survivors of a planetary catastrophe awake in a surreal, impossible world)
Green Rider (Kristen Britain, Fiction - A girl is swept up in a wild, dangerous adventure after agreeing to finish the final delivery of a dying royal messenger)
The Stoneheart trilogy (Charlie Fletcher, YA Fiction - An act of vandalism plunges a London boy into the unseen war between the city's statues and gargoyles)
The Gunslinger (Stephen King, Fiction - In a world on the brink of Apocalypse, one man searches for impossible salvation across a landscape gone mad)
Un Lun Dun (China Miéville, YA Fiction - Two girls find themselves in the surreal "abcity" mirror of London)
Sabriel (Garth Nix, YA Fiction - A teen girl sets out on a dangerous quest after her necromancer father sends an urgent message from beyond the gates of Death)
The Keys to the Kingdom: Mister Monday (Garth Nix, YA Fiction - A boy on the verge of death receives the key to God's own house, where rampant chaos and corruption rule)
The High House (James Stoddard, Fiction - A vast, surreal house encompasses whole worlds and touches on others)
Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere
(1996 BBC miniseries DVD)
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Stardust
Neil Gaiman
Perennial
Fiction, Fantasy
***+
DESCRIPTION: The village of Wall is much like any other old English hamlet, a place of stone buildings and farms and families who have lived and died on the land for
countless generations. There is, however, something peculiar about it: the wall from which the town takes its name, in which there is but a single gap. Beyond the wall lies the
land of Faerie, a vast and mysterious place that none from the village dare (or are allowed to) enter, save every nine years on May Day for the semi-annual fair. Here, magical
wonders are bought and sold, and those who know of it on either side of the wall come from far and wide for the May Day fair.
Young Tristram Thorn is an almost-ordinary boy from Wall. Like his father before him, he has idly dreamed of what wonders stretch beyond the meadow of the Fair in the land of
Faerie, but would never dare explore them himself... that is, until the day he makes a rash and bold promise to beautiful Victoria, his lady love. She promises him her hand if
he should retrieve a star they saw fall through the night sky, a star that landed well beyond the forbidden wall. Tristram is but one who seeks the fallen star, and his journeys
in Faerie lead him to a destiny he would never have dreamed of.
REVIEW: Gaiman has a vivid imagination and a lyrical writing style, but neither can quite make up for a wandering plot, thin characters, and some twists that were quite
obvious early on in the story. Many subplots eat lots of page count before eventually tying back into the main story. Too many, really. He could've devoted some of that time to
developing his characters or deepening the main story. Still, I did - for the most part - enjoy reading of Tristram's adventures, even if I saw the ending coming a mile away. A
good read, if you're willing to either slog through the plot tangle or gloss over it for the sake of the original setting and basic story.
You might also enjoy: The Everworld series (K. A. Applegate, YA Fiction - Four Chicago teens are pulled into a world where magic and elder gods still reign supreme)
Faerie Wars (Herbie Brennan, YA Fiction - When a boy finds a faerie prince in the garden, he is pulled into a brewing interdimensional conflict)
Magic Kingdom For Sale - Sold! (Terry Brooks, Fiction - A burned-out lawyer buys a magic kingdom from a catalog)
The Sisters Grimm series (Michael Buckley, YA Fiction - Two girls learn that fairy tales were based on actual events, and their immortal inspirations are still alive today)
Finder (Emma Bull, YA Fiction - In the city of Bordertown between mundane Earth and the faerie realms, a teen boy with a gift for finding things tracks down a killer)
The Artemis Fowl series (Eoin Colfer, YA Fiction - A boy criminal mastermind pits his wits against the underground Fairy nation)
The Wiz Biz books (Rich Cook, Fiction - A Silicon Valley programmer is plucked from his office cubicle and transported to a world of magic)
Eccentric Circles (Rebecca Lickiss, Fiction - A woman discovers a doorway to a fairy world through the back door of her inherited cottage)
Fablehaven (Brandon Mull, YA Fiction - Two kids discover a magic santctuary on their grandparents' farm)
The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica (James A. Owen, YA Fiction - Three London men, soon to be famous authors, cross over into the Archipelago of Dreams, inspiration of myth and story since prehistoric times)
The War of the Flowers (Tad Williams, Fiction - A man crosses into the faerie realm, where a war is brewing that may destroy Earth)
The 100 Cupboards trilogy (N. D. Wilson, YA Fiction - A boy discovers magical cupboard doors to other worlds, and unwittingly unleashes a terrible danger)
The Dragons of Ordinary Farm (Tad Williams and Deborah Beale, YA Fiction - A brother and sister find very unusual animals at their great-uncle's California farm)
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