From Cover to Cover: Waylander.

So, it's come to this. Last month it was distribution, this time it's technical difficulties. The blog for The Fountain Society is all nicely written up and ready to go, bar a few images and touches of editing, the problem? It's also currently trapped on a laptop that's deader than dead. Unfortunately there's not much I can do about that this month, but hopefully with everything crossed I'll be able to pull it out of the electronic limbo it's stuck in and present it to you here. What I will say is the book surprised me, given the authors pedigree in the horror genre it wasn't what I expected at all. As for anything beyond that, next month. I promise.

That left me in a bit of a predicament this month. I could either let the segment lie, which I'm reluctant to do as it's one of my few staples and I have to be honest, ideas aren't exactly coming hard and fast lay around the hospital ward. Rewrite The Fountain Society blog, which I was also reluctant to do until I've at least tried to summon it from my old hard drive. Or move on to the next title. I've decided to go for that option, and this month I'm covering a book suggested to me by Alan. To try and note even the majority of Alan's prolific career as a writer and editor would probably take me more time than giving my impressions on the book itself, but he's most recently been involved as one of the architects of Revolutionary War, a comic re-introducing the Marvel UK heroes to a whole new era, and also a comic documenting the history of the first World War through the eyes of those in the trenches with artist Lalit Kumar Sharma. I urge you to go check them out, as he's a keen professional and more importantly, just one of the friendliest people you could hope to meet.

Waylander is a fantasy novel written by Daid Gemmell and first published in 1986. The King of the Drenai is dead and their Kingdom under siege by the ruthless and overly ambitious vagrians. With defeat looming on all sides, all hope seems to rest on Dardalion, a man of peace turned into an avatar of war, and the Waylander. A man haunted by his past, who hopes that one, last desperate good deed can not only save the Drenai people, but also allow himself to finally forgive himself the sins of a tainted past. 

You know, Waylander is just a breath of fresh air. It really is. There are absolutely no quirks to this book, no complex lore, politics or heraldry to grasp and very little subtext lying below the surface. This is a world of two great armies pitched against each other, where the deeds of a few brave men can turn the tide of history and you always, always bet on the man with the least to live for and the quickest weapon. I'm being in no way disparaging when I say any of this, I think it's fantastic! It reminds me of Conan and the old Black Library Warhammer books, where great heroes rise and monsters are cleaved through and men live and die by their own follies. 

That's not to say this isn't a world handled with care. The backdrop that David Gemmel builds isn't as meticulously crafted as perhaps Tolkien, George R. R. Martin or even our friend from last month Philip Pullman would bring together but it more than does the job. He creates a world that is easy to settle into with stakes that are easy to understand, and then invests you into those stakes through the characters he introduces. Be it through a matter of personal honour and forgiveness or some higher calling as one man, in one tiny regiment standing against insurmountable odds.  At the end of the day Waylander presents a power struggle, and it would be easy to fall into the line of thought that we root for one side because one is good and one is evil. But as the story progresses we see that men are men, the most noble and heroic are just as capable of terrible things as those who have lived lives devoted to petty evil are of great deeds. We only care more for the one side because we see their story more clearly. 

I think this attitude towards the nature of good and evil serves the book well. There are characters in the book who interpret the conflict as something of a battle between light and dark, and I think if the reader wants to take that away from the text they're perfectly welcome too, but for me there seemed to be a little more bubbling under the surface. It wasn't obvious, or pushed into the face of the reader, but the overarching theme of the book seemed to be that the spirit of man was capable of anything given the right catalyst, or perhaps it is simply destiny that drives a man who has been a wretch all his life to end it in the most honourable way possible. 

This brings me onto one of the most intriguing concepts in the book, the Source. The Source is something of a mix of the Force and a conventional Christian God. It is supposedly all around us, guiding our movements, and even shows true, tangible power through Dardalion at points, but unlike the more physical presence of the Force it is more intangible. More like the Christian faith's God, much of the time the characters simply have to trust that it is there and will guide them. It's interesting because it adds a whole new dynamic to events, does Waylander pass his trials due to luck, coincidence and the unpredictable nature of mankind? Or does the Source make fools, heroes and martyrs of us all? Subtly moving the pieces and tweaking alignments and behaviour to serve it's grander purpose, in which Waylander and the Dranei war are only a small part. These are questions left to the reader, and indeed the characters themselves. Giving the Source just enough power to be mystical, but leaving it to be ambiguous enough to wonder if it's really all that they say it is. 

If I were to pick up one flaw in the book, it's that some of the dialogue is very stilted, especially early on. The first interactions between Danyal and Waylander, and even carrying over to other conversations between Dardalion, Waylander and Danyal later on just seemed stiff and wooden. I'm not sure if I got used to it or if the flow between characters just got better the more familiar and conversational they became with each other, but I found it tough going at first. I was also left wanting more from the epilogue. Everything was wrapped up nicely enough, but it just felt like the entire thing was more of a 'By the way, this is what happened in the next thirty or so years after the conflict!' than an actual capstone on immediate events. Like those little text boxes at the end of films that tell you what happened to the characters after their crazy adventures - And you learn that most of them died in really zany ways you wouldn't have minded seeing on screen. It's a minor niggle, and perhaps the sequels do more to delve into what happened next, I'll find out when I get to them but either way it's irrelevant for this book. 

Overall, Waylander is a top draw fantasy adventure about men hacking other men to pieces in the name of honour, and I loved it. It really cheered me up and pulled me through the last couple of days on the ward, and managed to settle me back into reading quite nicely. Minor niggles prevent me from slapping a full five Monkeys on it, but it is more than worth your time and if I gave half monkeys, I would certainly hand it one. As it is, I don't cut monkeys in half. That's just cruel and unusual. 

Four out of five Monkeys in a Hat. 

Next month... I'd like to tell you The Fountain Society, but if that falls through I think I might pull out The Stars My Destination instead. We'll see. 

From Cover to Cover: Northern Lights/The Golden Compass

Hello and welcome back to From Cover to Cover! I know last month I said I was going to be reading The Fountain Society, but there's been a slight change of plan. You see that book isn't available electronically, and getting a hold of a physical copy in the hospital was a mite difficult so I decided to push it back a little. Awfully sorry, Theron. I promise to get right on that next month. In fact, it is ordered and on the way! In the meantime I've decided to take a recommendation from my gorgeous and talented friend, Wanderlust Smith, an extremely talented and gorgeous alternative model who's work you can check out over here.

I've actually had this book lying on my shelf for years, but never got around to reading it, and as there's no better opportunity than an extended hospital stay for catching up with your own personal library, this seemed like a great time to finally get to it!

Northern Lights, or The Golden Compass in the United States, was first published in 1995 as the first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. It takes place in another world where the souls of humans are outwardly expressed by animal companions called daemons, and follows Lyra, a young girl under the care of scholars at Jordan University, Oxford. When her best friend, Rodger the kitchen boy, is taken by a group known only as the Gobblers, she vows to save him. Soon she is swept up in an epic journey to Arctic North, where she encounters a host of colourful characters, must escape the manipulative clutches of the devious Miss Coulter and discover the mysteries that lie behind Dust. The strange substance that both Miss Coulter, and her stoic uncle Lord Asriel, are so obsessed by. Oh, and it has armoured bears. And they're awesome!

I'm going to be referring to this book as Northern Lights, mainly because that's the name of the book I read, but also because the reason behind the name change in the US is kind of dumb.You see, originally Philip Pullman was going to name his trilogy The Golden Compasses which gave the US publisher impression that the first book was titled The Golden Compass, singular. Apparently they were so taken by this name, that even after Pullman changed the overarching title to His Dark Materials, they still insisted on using the name because they liked it. Way to support brand cohesion there, guys. I suppose it especially gets to me because, technically, there isn't even a compass in the book, no matter how much the film wanted to re-brand the alethiometer as one.

Naming issues aside, this book is an astounding read, especially on a technical level. It introduces us to a world that is like our own, perhaps stepped back in time a century or so, yet manages to establish its more fantastical elements effortlessly. It doesn't take long for daemons to seem like the most natural thing in the world, so much so that I can't help but feel that perhaps I'm in the wrong world and should, by rights, be in one where I have a daemon of my own, as it sounds wonderful. By the time we get into the realm of witches and armoured bears that talk and have opposable thumbs, well, it all feels perfectly sane and reasonable within the world that Pullman has built. In fact my only quarrel with these elements falls with the witches in particular, and that's more because I'm not sure what purpose they serve story wise other than to swoop in at opportune/inopportune moments to sweep the plot along. But at least I have no trouble accepting them as part of this world, and they do add an interesting wrinkle to the deamon dynamic.

Pullman builds his world well, and doesn't really bog down the book explaining the politics, or the geography, or the culture of anything that isn't immediately being dealt with at the time. This, I feel, is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand it means you become acquainted enough with Gyptian or Pasternore to follow along but it also means that if you try and branch out and focus on the world at large from snippets overheard from scholars, explorers, Coulter and Asriel, you can almost drown in the layers of detail there. Because even though Pullman doesn't force the politics and geography of the world into your face, it's obvious he's put a lot of thought into it. Characters discuss regions we never see, they mention rebellions, wars, the politics of far off nations. It all makes the world seem terribly fleshed out, but at the same time doesn't rely on the crutch of exposition. If anything, Pullman has his characters talk about the world as we would talk about our own, and that's a fairly impressive thing to pull off because writers can become so eager to build their world, that they fall into the trap of giving us a hand held guided tour of it just to make sure we appreciate the work they put in. And that's fine, but unless you're a tourist paired up with a very overeager local, that's not how the world really works.

These layers extend right down to the subtext, this is a novel that I think can be as deep as you want it depending on how much you're willing to peel back. The various orders of power and institute in the book are definite nods to organised Christianity, I'd single out the Catholic church because they seem obsessed with doing strange things to children, but none of them seem to have nearly enough dogma for it. On the face of it they're obsessed with the control of free thought and control and suppression of information (like most church like figures in fiction ever) but Pullman goes deeper, and soon the novel is brushing against the idea of sexual mutilation of young children for religious ends and the idea of his mysterious substance, Dust and the Daemons themselves being tied into the process of puberty and sexual progression. Something the various churches of the world have always tried to control with an iron fist.

I've heard it suggested that Lyra is a Christ like figure, coming into the world to shake the foundations of old time religion and show them a better way. But I don't think this is the case. Lyra and her companions seem more representative of free thought, innocence, knowledge, all the kinds of freedoms the church seek to repress. The Gyptians are travellers who go where they please, look after their own business and try to pay nobody any mind or trouble unless they're being paid mind or trouble themselves. The scholars at Jordan dedicate their life to guarding and passing on knowledge. Lee Scoresby is a freewheeling traveller and Iorek Byrnison and the other bears trust their inbuilt morality and instincts and are stronger for it - Both of whom are true to themselves and their needs, above external influences.

These characters sit in stark contrast to Miss Coulter and the other antagonists, who don't seem particularly content with their lot and are driven by things they're told, either by superiors such as the staff of Bolvangar, or by ancient texts and belief systems that they squander their life and their considerable power to try and interpret or fulfil. Yet, while the characters in this book are generally strong, believable and a joy to read about if there is an issue I take with the novel, it is with the characters.

First of all is Lyra. I think on the whole she's a great character, she's very obviously a child and in over her head, but through ignorance and sheer bullheadeness seems to pull through situations most adults would crumble in. I don't even really mind that she seems overly adept at picking up new skills. It was established from the off she is a bright child, she just needs an exciting way to learn for it to sink in and what's more exciting than an adventure across the world while being the focus of the biggest manhunt in history? What I don't like is that she always seems to be in the right place at the right time, and while much of this story is about destiny and fate and I'm sure you could shrug that off as such, it does become a little brow creasing when she just so happens to leave a party at just the right time for events to happen. Or bursts out of a place at exactly the right time to be saved. In a novel where the narrative is so rich and the story flows so well, these instances stand out in my head because they just bring it all to a juddering, clunking halt.

The other issue is that having reached the end of the book... I don't think I have all that much vested interest in the antagonists any more. Mrs. Coulter never really hooked me in the first place, the most dangerous and shocking thing about her was her monkey, and as for the other antagonist of the book - He was built up as a mysterious, complex character with his own secrets and his own agenda. Turned out he was as much of a spoilt child as Coulter herself, so used to getting his own way simply because he wanted it that he'd break the universe to please his own whims. I suppose it's my own fault. I built him up in my mind, then he turned out to be a much more basic and unlikeable character than I thought.

To scoring then! Northern Lights is a novel that's rich and deep with detail and subtext, the characters are fantastic, the story flows well and it has surprisingly dark edges but then, I suppose it was written as the anti-Narnia so that's to be expected. This is one that I'm sure most have read already, but if you haven't it's definitely worth a look! Four out of five monkeys.

Next week, we'll hopefully be back on track for the Fountain Society!

A Brave New World: The Japanese Devil Fish Girl

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction masterpiece by H.G. Wells, and do I really need to say anymore? If you haven't read the book, you've seen one of the movies, or listened to the rather superb (and in many ways emotionally and arguably narritively superior) Jeff Wayne rock opera, or perhaps you've read a comic or played the RTS game I mentioned in another blog - Either way, if you were presented with a vague, tripod like alien with metal tentacles swirling around it's flat hood like head you'd know what it is and where it came from. As such, The War of the Worlds has attracted many retellings over the years, many adaptations, but also many quasi-sequels.

I didn't really discover this fact on purpose, it was more a fact of the supposed sequels finding me over the years and not me actively looking for them, but when I saw how many there were some part of my hospital addled brain decided I needed to read them. So I'm going to share with you the results! These will be special little footnote editions of From Cover to Cover, where I take each book and examine how the two sides of the war for London town fared after the original novel, how these novels stack up as the sequels to the original they present themselves as and perhaps, most importantly, how they stack up as books in their own right. So let's get started with our first candidate, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl.

Authored by noted humourist and proprietor of far fetched fiction Robert Rankin, The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions was published in 2011. It takes place a decade after War of the Worlds (at least, it says it does but in reality seems to play fast and loose with the novels time line to suit its own ends), where the British Empire has not only managed to backwards engineer Martian technology for their own use, but also signed trade agreements and diplomatic alliances with emissaries from Venus and Jupiter. The story follows George Fox, a side show Zany (he prefers the term assistant) to an eccentric show man. Their main attraction, a dead, but anatomically whole Martian, is rotting fast and they need something fresh, new and exciting to pull in the Rubes. This leads them on a quest to find the single most awe-inspiring attraction on Earth - The legendary Japanese Devil Fish Girl.

How does mankind fare in this world post alien contact? As it turns out, extraordinary well. The novel most certainly presents us with a situation where man is on top again, or at the very least, the British Empire is. Having mastered Martian space travel and the terrifying might of the heat ray for their own use, the Empire has raised the one and only spaceport in the world next to Crystal Palace. They also have exclusive rights to intergalactic trade and diplomatic routes, leaving the rest of the world cold, and access to all the kinds of technology you'd expect in a steampunk novel. From airships, to steam cars, to the early onset of electricity, even the mighty Tesla coil makes an appearance. For some reason the fashion of small, accessorised goggles and cumbersome brass corsets has also caught on... But more on that later.

As for the Martians? Exterminated. Gone. Dust. The fact that they mounted a similar attack on Venus at the end of the original novel is either glossed over or forgotten, and I can only assume that that the Venusians repelled their advances and forced them back to their red orb, where the British Empire finally put the boot in. The solution to the problem of further invaders from Mars is possibly one of the highlights of the book. It's cold, it's callous and it's... Kind of genius in it's own way, and the historical figure that came up with it adds a nice little cherry on the cake.

When it comes to the themes and ideas that the novel brought over from the original, I can only shrug and say not many. The chapters are short, much like in the original, and there are Martians. The heat ray is about the only part of the mighty Martian armament that makes a return, with the Empire deciding instead to stick to the wheel and employ much clunkier airships than the Martian flying machines they had supposedly cracked. Wells' book is treated as a historic document, and the one theme I was surprised to see it pick up was the damning of Imperialism and the inward looking selfishness of the Empire that prompted Wells to originally write the book. Of course, being a humourous title a lot of that is there in the form of jokes and ribbing at the United Kingdom's perhaps chequered past, but still. It is there.

So, how good is this novel as a sequel? Honestly, not very. If you're looking for an absurd, steampunk tale that encompasses Wells' material but could just as easily not have done, you might enjoy this. If you're genuinely curious on Rankin's perspective of what might have happened after the Martian invasion, don't bother. The toughest thing for me to swallow is Rankin's insistence that the British Empire backwards engineered Martian space travel in less than a decade. I only find this unbelievable because... Well, the Martians literally shot a cannister through space. I suppose with enough time and research and some wonderfully fantastic minds behind the project you could backwards engineer a gun from the bullet fired from it, but I find it incredibly unlikely.

The technology in general has more in common with standard steampunk fare than anything in War of the Worlds, which is a shame as the presentation of how everything the Martians brought to Earth was carefully considered and wholly it's own. There's a reason the tripod with it's human collecting cage and flashing box like heat ray and whipping, writhing tentacles has become so iconic, and it's a shame Rankin chose not to take advantage of this and instead cling onto something we've seen a million times before. I suppose you could excuse this by saying the technological ideas came from the other alien races he introduces, but we see their technology later in the book and it resembles nothing humanity has come up with either.

Speaking of those aliens, they are another great shame. While Wells' vision of a giant brain on tentacles that sought subsistence from the blood of other beings may enter the realm of 'squint really hard and you can believe it's possible' in scientific terms, at least it's a wholly inhuman and different take on alien life. Not so with the men from Venus and Jupiter. They're you're standard humanoids with bits on, and even though I know the whole enterprise is a wacky comedy novel, considering the book it preports to follow I can't help find the execution of these elements lazy. More just another steampunk book cashing in on the trend than bringing anything new or interesting as a follow up.

The question is, does it fare any better as a book in it's own right? And to be honest, I think the term 'lazy' can be applied across the board. Lazy humour. Lazy integration of historical figures. And a lazily plotted story where all the twists can be seen a mile away.

 The humour of the book relies mostly on running gags, glib asides and the forceful integration of the modern into the Victorian Age. The problem is that for me, the majority of them completely missed the mark. I didn't find many of the running gags funny the first time they appeared, so to see them again and again drove me to frustration. The glib asides were either so glib or so overt that their effect was lost and as for the modernisms, I felt they could have been handled better. To draw comparison to Terry Pratchett, the key to his success is that while he writes satire of very modern concepts, he never lets that satire break the believability of his world. He takes the time and effort to weave these concepts into something that you can believe would be a part of his universe, but is still recognisable for what it really is. Rankin instead relies on the sudden, often jarring, insertion of a very modern concept and perhaps wishes to take the reader off guard or make them laugh at the absurdity of it. All it did was take me out of the book, especially the customs and immigration joke which made me groan and want to punch the page everytime I had to suffer through it.

But humour is subjective. What I find groansome, others may find side-splitting, so let's instead focus on how Rankin treats his historical figures. Slap-dashly, is the word (sort of!) that comes to mind. After having read the Burton and Swinburne series, novels which take great pains to use both persons of interest and noteworthy events (such as the downing of the Royal Charter in a storm or the Tichborne affair)  of the period and even the writing styles of authors who appear in the pages to tell an original story. Mark Hodder takes great care to link his characters together, and use actual events with brand new explanations and twists to bring his novels to life and ignite your curiosity about the era. Rankin takes a 'history is bunk' approach and uses figures who are long dead, with no explanation but the one I just gave, and throws them at us with new twists that never come to anything. Joesph Merrick, as Jack the Ripper, for example is only mentioned in passing and when a murder happens on the airship they are travelling on him with it is never linked back to him. Indeed, he is never mentioned again. Hitler also appears as a surly wine waiter. Why? Because Adolf Hitler in a pedestrian and subservient role is funny, I suppose. I would not even take issue with this, but there are so many historical persons living lives long past the ones they are due and it is never tied or factored into the actual story, it just exists as one of the many, tiresome long running jokes.

But the real reason I can't recommend this book is purely down to the writing. It's not atrocious, most certainly not, and it doesn't outstay it's welcome. The book is a breezy read, and has just enough going on to keep you interested, but as I said before the plot is predictable and the style it's written in does nothing for me. The worst offender is Rankin's continuing insistence of using terms like 'George did many sighings' or 'Ada did crossings of her arms' instead of 'George sighed' or 'Ada crossed her arms'. It perhaps seems innocuous to you and like I'm being nit-picky, but seeing it over and over and applied to turns of phrase that it clearly doesn't suit simply drove me batty by the end. The characters are also wholly uninteresting for the most part. Caricatures of famous historical figures that are drenched in nudge-nudge wink-wink hints to their future and the main characters of George and Ada, while initially charming, became gradually more boring as the novel progressed. As for Professor Coffin, I was intrigued and interested in the spritely old man at first, but he soon became a pantomime villain and Rankin couldn't quite make him as detestable as he wanted too. Even in the end, I was almost rooting for him. Almost.

Down to rating it is, then. Pretty simple and cut and dry to be honest. While initially charming and with some moments that made me smile, this book just needed more work. More work in every possible aspect to bring it up to the standard that it's premise, and supposed connections, promise. More damning though, is the fact that it's a book that thinks the use of the word 'wee-wee' and dung throwing are funny enough for multiple appearances. Which should tell you all you need to decide if the humour is for you.

Two out of Five Monkeys.

From Cover to Cover: Howl's Moving Castle

Hello, and welcome back to From Cover to Cover! My monthly segment where I check out a book suggested by my readers and give my impressions of it. This month the suggestion comes from Heather, who has rather reluctantly suggested a couple of rather interesting titles that I am very excited about checking out. She's also mentioned perhaps suggesting some more Young Adult titles in future, which could be an interesting change of pace. I've not read any YA for quite some time, but from the outside looking in it seems there's a lot of exciting ideas brewing over there if nothing else! For this month though, we'll be covering something I only knew as an animated movie (and was greatly surprised to find it was an adaptation of a previous work) until it was suggested to me.

Howl's Moving Castle is a 1986 fantasy novel written by Diana Wynne Jones. It takes place in the land of Ingary, a place that is bound by magic and fairy tale logic. The main character, Sophie, is the eldest of three sisters - Meaning that by that very fairy tale logic, she is damned to attempt to seek her fortune and both fail the hardest and suffer the most for it. Just as she resigns herself to a quiet, dull life making hats it seems this prophecy suddenly comes true, when she inadvertently wrongs the Witch of the Wastes and is turned into a old crone. Disgruntled and distressed by this turn of events, Sophie flees the hat store she was due to inherit and manages to find herself on the bizarre, moving structure that is the castle belonging to the Wizard Howl. Despite Howl's fearsome reputation for eating young women's hearts, Sophie finds herself locked into a seemingly impossible deal to regain her youth, and must find a way to prove her worth to the Wizard while settling into a peculiar new life with the castle's other residents. 

Okay, before we even break into the contents - Can we stop a moment and just admire how beautifully put together that cover is? It's a wonderfully eye-catching piece, that you can go back too after you've read the book and continue to admire all the story elements that reside within it. I don't usually talk about covers in this segment, because of how region and edition specific they are, but that one is gorgeous. A quick glance at Wynne Jones' bibliography reveals that  many of her other books have covers that are just as wonderful (at least, attached to the UK editions I'm looking at), to the point I don't think I've seen such consistently good cover artwork for one author since Josh Kirby's beautiful work for many of Terry Pratchett's books.  

Cover aside, it's difficult to know where to begin with this one. On the one hand, Howl isn't exactly a meaty book. It's prose is far from complex, the ideas it presents are very in line with much of Neil Gaiman's work - In that it's attempting to tell a modern story, with fairy tale sensibilities - and it's a remarkably quick read. I picked it up early in the afternoon, and I finished it that very night. But I wouldn't really have it any other way. Howl is a delightful read, from start to finish, with many high points and only a few, perplexing moments that made me pause at the time, but in hindsight lock together nicely.  

I can not say enough wonderful things about the characters of this book. At the start of the book, the main character, Sophie is a defeatist who doesn't so much let people walk over her, but is so resigned to people walking over her that she doesn't really give them a choice but to walk over her. It's a negative trait that could have so easily been played up to form her one and only character quirk, and I'm sure other authors would have had her sulking around the hat shop, sighing dramatically, wondering aloud why she must be the one who suffers but Sophie never really sinks into unreasonable self pity. It's the difference between being resigned and miserable, Sophie is resigned to her fate as the eldest of three, but that just means she's willing to give up any dreams of her own happiness to do what she can to secure the happiness of others. It's akin to a parent giving up their plans for the future to raise a child, and it makes her very endearing from the start. 

Later on, when Sophie is turned into an old crone, her persona changes. She becomes stubborn, determined and wildly outspoken in the way old people are - She's still, at her core, that defeatist who truly believes as the eldest she's going to mess everything up - But being given a new identity, with only a handful of years to live if she doesn't regain her youth, many of Sophie's inhibitions are shed. Yet it feels natural. For all intents and purposes Sophie is an old woman, with all the problems and benefits that come with being one. It makes perfect sense that her change in circumstances would effect how she'd see the world, and it's a surprisingly nice touch that there is a shift to her mental as well as her physical axis, and it's all the nicer that it's done well. 

All the other characters, big and small, are given much the same care and attention. Calcifer is initially presented as a rather dangerous and potentially devious fire demon, ayet while his relationship with Howl is constantly in question, he's a surprisingly relatable and human character for not having any legs and not leaving the one spot for the entire novel. The same with sane, sensible Michael, Howl's apprentice. On the surface he's the only person with his head screwed on properly in the entire castle, however he has his own little secrets and despite the fact that at times he seems to be the only one holding Howl's operation together, can still get into a mood and slink off. Howl is perhaps the hardest character to pin down in the book, I want to argue that he eventually becomes the simplest, but there are things that happen towards the end of the book that give him a whole other layer so that wouldn't be fair. 

The point that I'm slowly snaking too is that every main character feels like a real human being, and is fun and engaging to read about. While the side characters are also given their own quirks and can sometimes surprise you by not quite being the people you either thought, or assumed, they were. In fact the characters with the least amount of characterisation going for them are the villains, who never seem to have quite the same presence as everyone else. Then again, given that villains in fairy tales never amount to much more than cackling, sneering vehicles for making the main character suffer, I can't help but feel this is intentional. 

I found the more general description in Howl to sometimes be a stumbling block. It often felt sparse and could sometimes be unclear and at times doesn't paint a hugely vivid picture of what the book is presenting to you. It didn't really sink in for me that the castle had the shape of a giant moving chimney until another, similar castle was mentioned later in the book, for example. There also seems to be a reluctance to really aggrandise anything, Wynne Jones chooses never to really make one area feel very special or 'magical', and very few people feel any grander or more special than those you might meet in real life. Yes, you're aware that Mrs. Pentstemmon is a formidable magician by reputation, but upon meeting her she's much more like a stern head mistress or a stately lady whose respect is not easily earned. This is something many of the witches share in common, making magic seem more like a craft, business enterprise or hobby than a mysterious art form that oozes allure. 

There's a certain charm to this though, that I really enjoyed. The fairy tale tropes and magical influences that would stand out like a sore thumb in our world, are just normal every day occurrences in this world, and going to apprentice for a witch is just as normal and sane a career path as going to work at a cake shop - Providing you're the right daughter for the job. I felt this grounded the land of Ingary, making it feel more familiar than most fantasy worlds. At times it felt less like a fairy tale kingdom and more like a stroll around a village fete. It also allowed the stranger, more quirky moments, such as Howl covering himself in slime or the battle between Howl and the Witch, to stand out more keenly against the backdrop without having to be overly grandiose to compete with how wonderful and fantastical the word is. 

Charm is definitely the right word to describe Howl in general. It's a very charming tale, that despite the descriptive passages that perhaps don't paint as vivid a picture as other authors would with their own, creates a very realistic and believable world and then fills it with fun, witty, enjoyable characters and just shouts 'Go!'. The story it tells is also fairly well sewn together, although there are times where you think you can see the threads showing. The first appearance of the Witch of the Wastes is very sudden, very jarring and makes little sense and there are other moments like that throughout the book that make you ponder if the author hit a wall and just threw something in to keep the story moving along. But to Wynne Jones' credit, her novel is much more well crafted than that, and things that are problematic at first are eventually given reason and explanation and they all satisfied me very well. 

The one thing that initially bothered me, and I thought would bring the whole thing unstuck, was the ending. It's very swift, and very convenient and features the culmination of something that perhaps had been bubbling a little too far below the surface to be obvious. So seeing it come to a resolution almost felt tacked on. However, I slept on it, and came to realise that unlike other endings that simply leave me thinking 'Is that really it?!' Howl's did at least tie everything up nicely, I know where these characters are going even if I didn't get to say farewell. 

Another thing struck me very quickly afterwards. Howl is, at it's roots, a fairy tale. It never really rubs this in your face by making very oblivious allusions to famous tales, or populating it's world with characters from them like some other works of fiction, but it weaves the tropes into it's setting rather nicely and when all is said and done once the magic spells or wicked curses have been undone, fairy tales do tend to rush to the end very quickly. It's what the phrase 'And they all lived happily every after....' is designed for. Think back to Beauty and the Beast and how much time we spend getting to know the characters, mapping every step of their journey, and when the curse is broken? Everyone is human again, sing us out Mrs. Potts! I can't help but feel that the ending is designed to mirror this, and even though there's a strong part of me who's grown to love these characters and wants to know more, those last few lines are just wonderful. They put a smile on my face, and were oddly touching, and if I can close a book smiling and touched I'd say it's a job well done.

So, we get down to the rating. Ultimately Howl's Moving Castle is a very charming story, with very memorable characters and a very positive theme that I realise I didn't talk about much above, but seems to touch on the majority of the characters. At it's core, Howl is about imprisonment and how we choose to cope with the things imprisoning us. This does not have to mean being physically trapped, although in some cases that certainly does apply, but also being free from the mental, emotional and societal bonds that things such as our birth, standing in the community or even we ourselves place upon us. Sophie lives under the rain cloud of being the third child, and much of her journey boils down to if it's right for her to accept that or not. Calcifer is physically imprisoned by the magics that he and Howl weaved together, but freedom in the conventional sense could mean his own death. Howl is perpetually on the run from anything that seeks to tie him down, yet at the same time often finds himself backed into a corner or in abject misery because of his own flaws and personality issues. Howl is, at it's heart, about how the characters choose to either hide, or overcome these things and it certainly made me think on the kind of barriers that I create for myself. 

With all this being said, I come to something I've often thought of since I started this section. What would a book worthy of a five monkey rating look like.  I always assumed I'd just know it when I saw it. Ultimately as I sit here, racking my brain for more to say, I can't think of many bad points to pin on this one. There are a few oddities in the E-book, with some rather lovely looking illustrations shrank down to thumbnail size while each chapter heading is bold, underlined, hyper-linked and takes up the whole page. But that's on the publishers head, and is more to do with presentation than the actual content of the book. I also found that UK publisher Harper Collins considers this a children's book, which I can see, as it's most definitely accessible to everyone. But at the same time, Wynne Jones takes far better care of her overall narrative and presents far more interesting characters and scenarios than most adult fiction. Much like The Graveyard Book is one of my favourite Gaiman works (and also worthy of a five come to think of it) Howl's Moving Castle  is a very solid book where the enjoyment gained makes what nit picky flaws there are instantly forgettable.

So you know what, I'm doing it. Howl's Moving Castle gets the full five out of five monkeys, and I'm very much hoping the follow-up Castle in the Air is able to cement Diana Wynne Jones as an author I can be genuinely excited about. 

That's all for this month, come back next month when I'll be  looking at Wes Craven's début novel The Fountain Society.  

From Cover to Cover: Wool & A Canticle for Leibowitz

Ever since the dawn of man, since the world was something mankind could comprehend, we've had fiction about how and why it will eventually end. Post-apocalyptica is powerful because it can allow us not only a peek into a possible world of those left behind, but also warn us about how the actions of the present could lead us to this dark and desolate place. This month on From Cover to Cover, we're delving right in with a bit of a format change! Two tales set after the day civilisation as we know it ended, both several decades apart, each offering their own unique view on the day society dies and what arises after. Let's get right into it, shall we?

Wool started life in 2011 as a self published short story by Hugh Howey about a Sheriff named Holston and the terrible secrets he uncovers in the post-apocalyptic world of the Silo, a self contained civilisation where being sent outside the walls is a death sentence. This story was so well received that it spawned eight other parts, with them being collected into three books that make up the Silo Trilogy. Wool is the first of these, focusing on the impact of Holston's terrible discoveries and decisions, as well as the core mystery of why everyone sent to their death outside voluntarily cleans the sensors that allow those inside to see out. The actions and upheavals that follow on from this will change life in the Silo forever...

Wool was a suggestion from my friend Ashley over on Facebook, and there were a few things going against this book for me. The first was that I'd recently read another of Hugh Howey's novels, Half Way Home, which was not a shining example of genre literature to say the least. The second is that the opening is clumsy. The first part with Holston, and then going forward into part two with Jahns and Marne, is full of sledgehammer exposition and ham-fisted attempts to set up the rest of the book. The first part makes very little attempt to disguise that much of the prose only exists to drop information about the world on our heads, and much of the second part is building up to the introduction of the main character - Where again, whole segments just exist to tell us about her in a level of detail that's unnecessary because we're going to meet her and see all these things for ourselves soon. Honestly, I feel like these first two parts could have been cut in half, with Holston in particular existing as a GRRM style, single chapter prologue and I don't feel like anything would have been lost. 

Thank God, then, for Juliette! First of all for actually having a name, because if I had to do one more of these with a nameless, faceless protagonist in a row I was going to scream, but also because once she hits the pages this book becomes an entirely different animal. Juliette seems to bring a focus to the novel, it stops trying to purposely build up it's world and mysteries and just lets them happen organically, with Juliette at the centre investigating and experiencing all of it. She herself is a strong, capable character who has a skillset and attitude that sets her apart from most of the other characters we've met up to that point, but some very clear and human flaws soon become apparent. She nestles into this beautiful little nook between being a capable and independent woman, but not allowing that to be all she is. She's allowed to cry, allowed to feel, allowed to make mistakes and allowed to be human. Once we have her as our guide, the book becomes an real adventure, full of twists and turns and surprisingly varied locations considering the setting. The only downside is that the initial mystery Jules investigates would have been much more powerful if it hadn't already been unravelled by Holston, but then again whole new intrigues arise to replace them that are much more interesting. 

Putting aside Juliette, if I were to pick out one main strength of Wool it would be the characters. Every single one feels very human, with their own quirks and agendas and stories going on inside their head. Marnes was the first one I was truly drawn too, the grizzled old deputy who has been older than every Sheriff the silo has had for years because he's happy in his place. The secret love between him and mayor Jahns, something that dominates so much of their lives but is never really spoken until they're too old to do anything about it, is touching and very real. They make each other feel young and alive, and it's very touching to see them interact with each other. Solo is another interesting figure in the book, a perpetual child in the body of a fifty year old man. When we meet him, he is older and in many ways far more experienced in the world than Juliette, but he's coping with a massive tragedy by not really acknowledging that he's grown at all since then, so he's also excitable and prone to being distracted.

We also have Lukas, the star-gazing IT tech who is so much like Juliette yet so different. His obsession with the stars, and hers with the deepest depths of the Silo collecting pretty rocks is an interesting contrast. Then there's the agoraphobic old man Walker, a skilled electrician in a world where electronics are clearly not understood and even Bernard, the main antagonist of the book, has flashes of not being a totally bad guy. You get the impression that he's just been swept along by something greater than himself, and if you squint and tilt your head you can see his point of view. It doesn't stop him being a complete, irrepressible bastard, but it does give him a layer of sympathy that a lesser work would have skimped. It's these quirks and little humanities that really make the book, and on the occasions they interact and spark against each other is when the book really comes to life. I can't overstate how much I love Howey's dialogue in Wool, I just really wish there was more of it. Although one thing to note is that as much as you're going to fall in love with these characters, Howey does not shy away from killing them, no matter how much development he's poured into them. This is going to be one novel where you're constantly cursing his name, for sure.

That's not to say there isn't strength in the narrative as well. The world Howey builds is an interesting one, with it's relatively small scale being an advantage rather than a disadvantage. I love the idea that the perspective on the world is so small, that even a stairway can be regarded as a foreign territory even though Porters can zip up and down those stairways in a matter of days. It gives a very medieval village aspect to the whole thing, nobody leaves their designated areas unless they have too. Thoughts of exploring are impractical, and very much discouraged by those in charge. It's also an ever changing landscape with bits constantly being repaired and remodelled as necessary. The idea of the cleanings is also an incredibly powerful one that underlines everything in this society. It's the cornerstone of their entire justice system, that if you step out of line? You're sent out to clean. It also forms an important part of their social, economic and spiritual make up as well. With vacations planned around a view through freshly cleaned, unspoiled sensor arrays, market stalls booming as people come up from all of the various layers of the Silo to view the outside from the top and as their entire spirituality revolves around the idea that the Silo is the only thing to exist (literally placed on Earth by God himself), anything that relieves the pressure in the Silo is a good thing by the Priests.  The world is well put together, well thought out and when Juliet explores some other areas of it really looms in and tightly  constricts both her, and the reader.

My only complaint in this regard is the idea of death. At one point Juliette contemplates how cheap life and death are, people summed up entirely in the manilla case folders that she has as sheriff. Yet everything else in the book points to life being sacred and tightly controlled, one person goes out and another is allowed to be born. While it's clear the resources are stressed and nerves are easily frayed, the sanctity of life is something that falls through the cracks a little when it also seems like it could just as easily be regarded as a throwaway commodity from another perspective. Although I do love the deeply entrenched pacifist ideals the Silo seem to have, and the results of what happens when they break down is truly brutal.

One thing that did surprise me is that Wool actually has an ending! A good, solid, end point at that. I was worried that as it was originally a collection of novellas that built up to a bigger story, and even the first book collecting them was nominally part one of a trilogy, that the format wouldn't allow for a solid end point. There was also Half Way Home looming in my mind, with it's relative shambles of a rushed, tacked on ending still sour in my mouth. I was mistaken. Wool's ending is satisfying, and if you wanted to end there without reading the rest of the trilogy you could. If anything I'm worried it wraps up it's plot a little too well, and there will be little left for the sequels to pick over. But a new, impossible challenge does loom - So I suppose we'll see Juliette and friends tackle that. Plus, contrary to what everyone thought, there's a whole world out there...And Wool certainly makes me feel compelled to explore.

A Canticle for Leibowitz is a sci-fi classic that was first published in 1960. Originally written by Walter M. Miller Jr. as a series of three novellas, he recognised certain connecting elements and themes in them and decided to edit them together into one cohesive work. The book focuses on the history of North America after the Flame Deluge, a nuclear war that wiped out civilisation as we know it and mutated a good portion of what was left. In particular it focuses on the Albertian Order of Leibowitz a sect of the Catholic church dedicated to Beatus Leibowitz, a Cold War weapons engineer who after the fallout dedicated his life to preserving the knowledge and history of his former civilisation before it is lost forever. It shows us, over the course of millennia, the lengths they go to preserve this lost knowledge in a world that simply does not care for it, or their ideas on it.

This book fell into my sphere of influence after I was discussing Wool with Richard (yes, he who suggested Ocean at the End of the Lane last month. I told you that you'd be seeing his name again, I just never realised I would be so soon!) and he suggested holding Canticle up against it for comparison. As I read through it, I came to realise that it was a more interesting comparison than I initially realised, but I'll get to that. I'd rather like to judge this book on it's own merits first but admittedly, it's hard to know where to start.

Canticle is a novel that's driven forward by ideas, and squarely focused on the world that it's building. Miller takes great care to examine the impact of nuclear war, and the ideas that would spring up in the minds of those left behind hundreds of years later. The first part is particularly interesting, as it deals directly with the first protagonist, Brother Francis, stumbling into a fallout shelter and finding a tool box and schematics. Both his own, and the reaction of the Abbey, to this find is intriguing. Miller not only paints a very realistic picture of a group of people bickering and examining a past they can never hope to understand, in scenes that I can easily imagine will be repeated hundreds of years after our own civilisations demise and have seen played out by those trying to untangle ancient histories in the past, but also shines these events through the lens of mythology. We see the dreaded Fallout become characterised by demons in the Catholic canon, and Lucifier himself has become synonymous with the bombs that bring them. Meanwhile the Ancients of the previous civilisation (known to us as engineers and scientists of the Cold War era) have become revered as Saints and Beatus', and their technology is highly revered and regarded as dangerous. It gives the impression, in the early stages, of a fantasy novel brushing up against a sci-fi one - Only the science fiction elements are modern day technology that we're familiar with, making the world seem both more realistic and yet, more otherworldly, all at once.

The progressive Catholic church itself is an interesting, and wholly sympathetic, organisation. Strangely so, considering the bad rap the Catholic church usually gets (and arguably, deserves) in many works of fiction. Although they adhere to many practices and rituals that we're familiar with, in the case of the Order of Leibowitz at least, the dogma has also got mixed up with the principles of science and history. Biblical fables have been reworked to become warning parables against the repetition of the tragedy that reduced the world to it's current state and the main goal of the Order of Leibowitz is to preserve what knowledge is left, so that it can be used to spark a new renaissance when the dark times are over. Their clashes with secular scholars in the second part is especially telling, as while we see that the secular scholars are more brilliant and advanced in their theory, they've forgot so much of the world that's past that most of their theory is pure conjecture. There is an especially ironic scene where Thon Taddeo regards a monk for proposing the theory of Evolution, now a religious theory in this new world, much like a child who is grasping at things he can't understand. More often than not these secular men regard the monks as backwards and rigid, but time and time again we see that they are far more flexible and understanding than their counterparts.

The main point of contention, however, lies in the moral contrast of these two groups. I don't think Miller is trying to paint a wholly pro-Catholic narrative, especially as he shows them to be prone to exaggeration, with much of their canonical history obviously being a half remembered and half invented idea of the truth. I think he more wishes to portray the dangers of science, progress and expansion without the morality to ground it. The state and secular scientists we see are brilliant, compassionate and reasonable - They're good people, and he never tries to portray them as anything else. But they're also willing to turn a blind eye, or willingly support, the practices of their rulers that show all the signs of leading back towards the road of mankind's destruction. Personally I don't think this moral guidance needs to be born of a church, but the theological backdrop does lend it more weight, especially when it's proven to be impotent in the face of the figures of the state.

All of this, and the fact that the last part is essentially a world that parallels that of the 1950s-early 1960s in many direct ways, shows the novel to be warning against using the wonderful technologies science has developed for short term gains and questionable ends, as well as a warning not to allow history to repeat itself. Civilisations have rose, fallen, and cannibalised themselves throughout history but if we allow out fall to come about through nuclear arms, our fall and cannibalisation will be greater than ever. It all comes together to create a novel that's bursting with ideas, and themes, and things that I don't think I was able to wholly grasp or come to terms with in just one reading. What I've covered here feels like only the tip of the ice berg, and certainly only a small portion the notes I've made, and doesn't get into the invocation of existing religious figures and how, hundreds if not thousands of years on, characters from the first part of the book have become legends in their own way later down the line. It doesn't touch on the duel vanity and obsession of most of the characters within, and the actions that both of those qualities lead them to take. It's a novel that I'm certain will reward re-reading with new insights into the text you noticed, and whole new layers that perhaps you glossed over before.

That's not to say it doesn't have it's problems. The prose can, by turns, be dense to read and some of the narration can be disjointed at times. The perspective slips and slides into the heads of several different characters at a whim, and sometimes simply breaks away from perspective entirely to recite a biblical fable or piece of history that thematically ties to the current situation of the character. The jump between different parts is also rather jarring, we're suddenly dropped head first into a whole new era, with whole new characters and Miller does nothing to ease us in. Taken as three novellas this isn't really an issue, but as a whole, cohesive story it can slow the pace of the book to a standstill while you try to get to grips with what happened to the world while you were busy turning the page. There is also a great amount of religious jargon that went over my head. I'd say it may as well have been written in another language, but the truth of the matter is that most of it was. It adds to the atmosphere, and when you're dealing so intently with an order of monks is unavoidable, but I still felt my eyes glazing over when trying to content with the larger portions of it.

Considering they're so disparate, it's not as difficult to draw comparison between the two as one might thing. Even though they both deal with a world after the Apocalypse, and from what I can glean from Wool the apocalypse is very similar in nature, the way the novels handle their themes and their presentation is almost at the other end of the scale from each other. Wool is driven by it's characters, whereas Canticle is driven by the world it presents. Wool focuses on the Silo, a claustrophobic metal tower that barely protrudes the surface of the ground it's buried in, whereas Canticle deals with the history of an entire continent over the course of a millennia. Wool is skittish about revealing the true origin of the apocalypse, but if there is one thing the people in Canticle are sure of it's that, having built a religion and legal system around attempting to assure it never happens again. Wool is about the control and regulation of knowledge, supposedly for the protection of the many by the few, in a world that desires it while Canticle is about the preservation of knowledge and ancient culture in a world that has no interest in it.

Without a doubt Canticle is the more cerebral and well crafted of the pair. Two headed mutants aside (which is possible, but still pulls me out a little) it builds a very realistic world with very realistic consequences unfurling as a result of the actions of everyone from the 'Ancients' to the characters we follow throughout the various parts of the book, and as mentioned above is practically dripping in subtext. Wool has it's share of things to say, of course. It's a rumination on class imbalance (one could even argue that Juliette is like a Victorian crusader, an upper-middle class woman fighting for the workers rights), how much we can trust those directly above us and what kind of sacrifices we are prepared to make for our species to survive, and if those sacrifices are justified or beyond the pale. But it's strength lies more in it's exciting narrative and personable characterisation. It may not reward re-reading on an intellectual level like Canticle might, but it's thoroughly exciting and worthwhile in it's own way.

So, to scoring then. For Wool this is an easy call - Despite a very weak start, there's enough to love in the later chapters to make this a very easy four out of five monkeys!

For A Canticle for Leibowitz however, this is more problematic. The flaws that I mentioned above did get in the way of my enjoyment, but by the time I finished the book and let it all sink in - They didn't seem quite so problematic. Each part has it's own draw, and the ending is a thing of absolute wonder. The sudden dramatic urgency of it, coupled with what may have been the delusions of a senseless man or an honest to God miracle had me rapt, and really gave the book a great punch to end on. I also wonder if, in a different mood, on a different day, I could read different things into some of the sections that seemed to drag and take more enjoyment away from them. But ultimately, that would be a different day, a different reading and not the experience I actually had. So taking into account all the times it made my eyes glaze over, and the flagrant overuse of Latin, I think this is another four Monkeyer.

I hope you enjoyed this little deviation from the norm, and please, do let me know how the two book format worked out and if you'd want it to return! Any suggestions for improvements would, of course, also be welcome! As always you can suggest a book for next month by commenting below, or posting the title anywhere I can see it. Next month going to be delving into Howl's Moving Castle, the book that spawned a movie that I've yet to see, but may also give a watch. See you then! 

From Cover to Cover: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Hello, and welcome back to From Cover to Cover. This month I'm taking a suggestion from the man they call the Virtual Octopus, or as he's more mundanely known, Richard. Over the many years of our friendship, he's consistently done his best to push me in the direction of good, solid genre fiction that he thinks I'd like and I don't think he's ever failed me yet. He was the one who introduced me to A Song of Ice and Fire years before it really took off into the juggernaut it is now, our shared love of Terry Pratchett has given us plenty to talk about over the years and he is also the man responsible for me reading The Light Ages, which is a wonderful take on a steampunk universe that's much more ramshackle and grime coated and all together hopeless than most anything I've ever read. If there's one thing that gets under my skin, it's clean Victoriana. Especially clean Victoriana from a street level. But I digress! Richard, true to form, has given me more suggestions for this segment than anyone else - I'm sure you'll see some of them later down the line, although no doubt I'll peruse some on my own time instead - And true to my own form, I've chosen the one that seemed to be given with the tongue most firmly planted in cheek.

So with that, ladies and gentlemen, I introduce you too The Ocean at the End of the Lane...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a 2012 novel by Neil Gaiman, a British fantasy author renown for his unusually scruffy hair, dressing in any colour he likes as long as it's black and being acclaimed across a number of media, including prose, poetry, comic books, television and movies. Originally intended to be a short story, it soon outgrew this definition and became a novella, and soon after that the full fledged novel we're looking at today. It opens with a nameless protagonist (yes, another one!) riding aimlessly back to what remains of his childhood home after his mother's funeral. He comes across a farm that he believed an old friend lived in decades ago and sits down in front of the small pond behind the building, beginning to reminisce. Soon memories of a long forgotten incident in his childhood start to bubble up that are too impossible to believe, a strange series of events that begins with the apparent suicide of their current lodger and soon launches him into the affairs of another world entirely. As the memories come flooding back and take a sharper focus in his mind, the reader experiences each moment of it through the eyes of his seven year old self, constantly pondering if any of it is true, because surely it's all too fantastical for our hero to just forget... Isn't it?

Of all the Neil Gaiman stories, I think I'm glad that I'm able to talk about this one. Ocean is an interesting book when compared to the rest of his work, as it clearly has a different focus that's more abstract and experimental for him. It was written for his wife, Amanda Palmer, with a greater focus on things she likes - Which seems to amount to a story that's entrenched deeper in the real world than most of his work and that brings more personal feelings to the fore than ever. I don't want to dwell too long on it's origins, but this interview with Gaiman and this blog from Palmer weave an interesting narrative for the book's genesis, and for me helped to put a lot of the things I found problematic with this book into focus. Either way, the fact that he wrote it for his wife either because he missed her and desired to write something she would love, or to open his heart and let her examine his feelings in a way that he would never be able too any other way is beautiful and I'm glad this book exists, if only for that.

I have to admit, when I started reading, I didn't think I was going to like this one. Or at least, not as much as I wanted too. Unlike other works by Gaiman I've read, it was very slow to reel me in and I found the main character initially distracting. The problem with writing a more personal tale that's less blurred by the lines of fantasy after decades of adding splashes of those events into your fiction, is that so much of it seems familiar. The description of the house our protagonist lived in, for example, is the house from Coraline, because they're one and the same. Both drawn from the same memories of a house that Gaiman had grew up in as a child. And there are echoes of situations and events and places that feel familiar throughout, and I'm never quite sure if they're handled as well. It comes across feeling like one of Gaiman's more introspective short stories, although because it's a novel it takes longer to get to the meat of the story, or the weird that is going to inevitably surround it, spending more time focusing on the elements of those stories I'm not quite as keen on, and loses me a bit.

The game of 'Is this Neil?' you can play with the protagonist throughout the book is also distracting, but not quite to the same degree. I found the hero of the piece to be very relatable , possibly to a painful degree. He was a child who loves books, is slow to make friends, is a huge fan of Batman, is awkward at social functions and believes in white bread above every other kind, because it's not supposed to taste of anything as that's not it's job. That is more me than I feel comfortable admitting, and to a degree I can even relate to the relationship he had with his parents. When the protagonist says he envied the heroes in his book who got a quick smack and then all was forgotten? I understood. I only have one, very vivid memory of my mother ever laying a hand on me and to be honest? I think I prefer it to all the times that both of my parents have ever raised voices to me as a child. There's a certain hopeless, belittling feeling that it brings that has a greater impact than physical pain and as a child, it's harder to understand that people say things they don't mean because they're angry. Now, my parents are wonderful people and I will never hear a bad word said about them if it isn't in jest - I wouldn't be alive today if it wasn't for all the love, care and support they've given me and I truly appreciate it. However, when you're young it's very easy to take things to heart, and this came through in the book wonderfully. The moment the protagonist asked that one, last whimpered question of his father in the fairy ring? I smiled. It's the kind of defence you always wanted to mount, but were afraid it would just make them more angry, and it was beautiful.

As you may have picked up from that, the main character is a very relatable one and, as always, Gaiman excels at writing children. No thought feels too adult, no line of dialogue ever feels wrong coming out of his mouth and the entirely self-centred, yet naive and innocent, perspective of a child is maintained throughout. The first thing the protagonist asks, upon learning that the family car has been stolen, is if his comic is still on the back seat and if they stole that too. It's not a stupid question, or a selfish one, it's an honest one which reflects where the characters priorities lie. I also find it interesting that the story is told in flashback, so on occasion we get shots of his adult frame of mind as he remembers and narrates, occasionally giving a fresh perspective on certain elements of the story. I have to admit that despite all this, I don't feel like I really know him all that well. Especially compared to other Gaiman protagonists. I'm very familiar with the world inside his head, but I'm not as familiar with his place in it - As I was with Shadow, or Fat Charlie, or Tristan or even Coraline, Nobody or Odd. In those stories the world comes alive around them, and we hear bits and pieces of far off things such as how Fat Charlie got his name or of Shadow's time in prison learning coin tricks, here we don't really get anything of the sort. The story exists in the main characters mind, and while it makes sense for the edges of his world to seem more blurred and less fleshed out, it also means this world doesn't spring from the page and grab you the same way either. And ultimately, nor does the protagonist. I relate to him, I think he's a great example of a child character, but I'm not sure I'd go as far to say I'm terribly familiar with him.

The supporting characters are a little light on the ground in this venture too. You have the main character's family, his largely absent mother, his father who seems like a good man but for the most part exists as a puppet to a malevolent force for most of the book and his snot nosed brat of a sister who may only seem like a snot nosed brat because we're looking at her through the eyes of her older brother. There's also the Hempstocks. Three generations of women living together quietly on a farm at the end of the lane, who are really... To be perfectly honest with you, I'm not sure what they are. At first I thought they were witches, but the book refutes that quite early on. They seem to be refugees from the other world with the orange sky that we are introduced too later, but Old Mrs. Hempstock seems even older than that. Even older than creation. Her role in everything is still unclear in the end, but all I can tell you is I love her as I grew to love all the Hempstocks. Originally I found the two Mrs Hempstocks to be indistinguishable from one another, but they soon developed their own quirks and personalties, and as for Lettie I honestly wouldn't have minded if the whole book had been about her. I also loved the strange mix of science and mysticism that seemed to run through them, with Old Mrs. Hempstock having existed before the Big Bang and a delightfully fairytale-esque spin on particle physics that is, perhaps, one of the few things in this book that justifies all the praise it gets as a defining fairy tale for the modern age.

While the initial transition from the mundane to the weird was underwhelming, and by the end of the book I couldn't remember for the life of me why it happened, things really start firing on all cylinders with the introduction of Ursla Monkton and there are very few splutters from there on out. Ursla Monkton is the demon housekeeper from Hell, the reverse Mary Poppins in every sense of the word. She exists to make the life of the main character a walking nightmare and if I thought Fat Charlie got a kicking in The Anansi Boys? What this character goes through tops that tenfold. I'm not sure if it's more powerful because he's so young, but it does add to the helplessness of it all. Ursla Monkton is an adult, our character is a seven year old boy who has already forced one nanny out. That alone is scary enough, an adult who is out to get you and has the complete faith of your parents where you do not, add the fact that she's a literal monster onto that? And like I said, walking nightmare. The scenes that see our character a prisoner in his own home ring of implied child abuse, but soon turn into something that is very literal child abuse and I guarantee - Whatever you think of this book, there is one scene that will stick with you forever. It's sheer horror of the most heart pounding kind, and it's written so perfectly that it captures you right there, in the moment, with our hero.

I really can't fault the writing in this book. I've long admired Neil Gaiman for his descriptive ability, which may not be the most in-depth or detailed, but always does a good job of conveying both the mundane and the strange with equal clarity. While I also praised the descriptive text of A Shadow Over Innsmouth, this is different. Lovecraft describes things in a way that you feel as though you can see them, Gaiman describes them in a way that makes you feel as though they've existed in your imagination all along and were only looking for an excuse to come out. He evokes language that is simple to read, yet says everything it needs to say, and when he draws comparisons to other things they're always relatable. Like how he compares the dead body of the Opal Miner to a waxwork dummy, it's still human in shape, but everything that had made him human had been drained out. I also feel like this book contains some of the best wrting of Gaiman's career. The scene where our main character is pulling a worm from his foot is appropriately cringe worthy and very visceral, and as for the bathtub scene... Like I implied above, will live with me forever.

There's a number of interesting themes running through this book, but the one I latched onto most was the ruminations on what it means to be an adult. Whenever danger was afoot, it was marked by the absence or destruction of things we associate with childhood. The main character's SMASH comic is crumpled and ruined under the body of the dead miner, the border to keep Ursa Monkton in the house is made up of broken toys and then there's the kitten. The kitten is the ultimate miner's canary for the story, when it was around the main character was safe, secure, nothing could touch him - But when it wasn't there? The world was a dark and dangerous place, and something terrible was likely to happen to him. It forces him into a world that no child should have to face, and situations that even an adult would struggle to cope with. The line between child and adult is as distinct as it is tenuous, with the father of the hero acting more like a child than an adult and the main character forced to be braver than any of the actual adults around him. It shows that for all the years we might gain, all the wisdom and experience we may accumulate, on some level we're still the same person. As Lettie Hempstock says, 'Grown up's don't look like grown-ups on the inside either'. I know I don't feel like one, never have, yet when I was a child? They could seem to be a whole other race entirely. It's interesting, the difference between how we present ourselves to the world and how we actually are, and it's something that I can personally latch onto and relate to.

If I may derail this impressions to perhaps take you on the train to crazy town for a moment, something struck me half way through reading this. As well as the things that were familiar because they were taken from Gaiman's childhood and had been woven into other stories I'd read, there also seemed to be nods and winks to other work throughout. The song that shapes the world made a return from The Anansi Boys and a reference to a bazaar that shouldn't have been open yet and trades all manner of wonderful things which puts me in mind of both Stardust and Neverwhere. It did make me wonder, is a fictionalised account of how Neil Gaiman gets his ideas interwoven into this narrative? Or did Lettie pop off into other books during the narrative? It sounded crazy and reaching, until I read the following snippet from the interview above;

I kept expecting to write a story about the Hempstocks, but never did," Gaiman continued. "I had decided their family had spread out a bit. There's a Hempstock in 'Stardust.' A Hempstock in 'The Graveyard Book.' Then in 2003, I bought my first MINI Cooper and my father was visiting America at the time. I recalled my father having a MINI as well and asked why he got rid of his. He told of how he had a lodger who gambled away his money -- and his friends' money -- then stole my dad's MINI. Then, [my father] went down to the lane and found the man's body in the vehicle later that afternoon.

Knowing that the Hempstocks are so far flung through his fiction but only appeared properly in a tale inspired by a real life incident adds some credence to the whole thing, but even if it only exists in my head and I am overreaching, it's an interesting idea nonetheless.

With that idea safely released into the ether, let's break into the discussion point for this month. As I said above, this suggestion was very tongue in cheek and may have even been a joke, but even if it was I found myself captivated with the idea of answering it. The question that Richard asked was 'Has Neil Gaiman got much, much, less exciting now he's married to Amanda Palmer? Or was he always just kind of overrated?'

Now, for those who remember the original mission statement of this segment (mainly to get me to read more) you may be regarding my first couple of choices with a cynical, even judgemental, eye. A short story, and a very short novel is hardly the most inspiring of starts, afterall. But rest assured! To answer this question I read and re-read almost any Gaiman I could get my hands on, you may even be able to pinpoint when I was doing it by the amount of Gaiman references that emerged in the posts of this blog over the period that I was reading them. I've read a good eleven books, watched a couple of movies and even delved into a collection of his Batman work when I was bored one night and I feel that after doing this? The second part of this question is an easy answer, the first is a little more problematic.

Was he always kind of overrated? The simple answer is, no. Neil Gaiman is not overrated, not even in the sense of somebody who is really good, but perhaps not as good as all the attention they get. In a world where the names J.K. Rowling, Stephanie Mayer and E.L. James are on more people's lips than Neil Gaiman (and for clarity, I'm not trying to draw comparisons to any one of those authors with the other - Simply stating their work is not, and I doubt it will ever be, as consistently good or imaginative as Gaiman's) I don't think he could ever be overrated. Neil Gaiman is a font of wonderful ideas, even his short stories seem packed with things that I'd kill to be able to conjure up in my own imagination and it's no wonder that people seem to always ask him where they come from - One of the main blocks I have to writing my own fiction is finding an initial idea I can stick with, and yet there's Neil Gaiman with more ideas than he can seem to cope with. It'd be unfair, if he didn't use them so wonderfully.

And that's the other thing about Neil Gaiman, he may not be the most skilled writer in the world. The themes he tackles may not be the most ground-breaking or plumb the depths of the human soul. I can see how somebody who enjoys a more complex prose with grand political or philosophical statements woven intricately into the text, or entire worlds fully mapped out in the most minute of details so they feel like world histories instead of fictional kingdoms may be put off by him. They may even overlook him. But there's a simple joy to the way Neil Gaiman writes. It's highly accessible, easy to read and yet stokes the fires of the readers mind and asks them to imagine. Imagine a world where a falling star can be a beautiful, if petulant, young woman who is sought after by a cast of colour characters in a grand fairytale. Imagine a world where the dispossessed of London fall through the cracks into another London that is much like the one above, yet absolutely nothing like it at all. Imagine a world where Gods of every mythology roam the American landscape, brought there by generations of immigrants from across the world, even as new Gods based on the technologies we worship spring up to take their place.

His writing asks you to imagine, and you can. Clear, crisp, as if it was always there and you just needed to be reminded. On top of all this, his greatest feat of all, is that he makes it look easy. It's not so much that he makes it look like you could do exactly what he does, but that you don't need to write overly complex prose, with in-depth descriptions of everything, to be a successful writer. You can get away with something lighter, and it can carry just as much weight and power. I remember, years ago, when I first read American Gods. I felt inspired. I felt like I'd learned more about writing in that one book than I had in all the time reading, and fumbling with the idea of creating fiction, before it. It's a memory I always look back on when I'm feeling down and uncreative, it doesn't always help, but it's nice to know it's there.

As for the second part of the question, it's tough to judge because Ocean is the first full adult novel that Neil Gaiman has written since they were married. While I think that this novel is perhaps weaker than his previous work, it was also written under very special circumstances as we discussed above. He wrote it for Amanda, and tried to do something very different from the norm, and even though it's not perfect it's also not bad by any stretch. Even if it was, the fact that it arose in such unusual circumstances means that it is no indication of what Gaiman's future work is going to be like.

So let's cast the net further. The other prominent work that Neil Gaiman has written during the few years of his marriage is a children's book called Fortunately, the Milk that was published last year. You may remember in my year end retrospective, I mentioned going to a live reading of it and that experience was fairly glorious. So glorious I feverishly read the book again on the train home. Admittedly it's not as strong as his other children's books, but it also seems aimed at a younger age bracket than those works and what it lacks in complexity, it makes up for in imagination. Fortunately, the Milk is a shaggy dog story that may or may not be true, and would be something the Them from Good Omens would be proud of. In fact, it kind of made me smile when I read about the adventures the Them dreamed up in their heads, as Fortunately, the Milk was all that distilled. It's a good book, but is it an exciting move for him? Is Ocean at the End of the Lane an exciting one?

Ultimately, I'd say yes. One can argue about the quality of Ocean until the tides come in, and if I'm being perfectly honest if you wanted me to stack everything he wrote pre-marriage to everything post? Yes, the pre-marriage would come up short, but you're also asking me to compare decades of work to that of a handful of years. What's exciting is an entirely different thing from what's good, and even though Ocean didn't hit all the marks for me, what it represents definitely excites me. It represents Neil Gaiman coming out of his shell as a writer and trying new things. It represents a new kind of book, which may call back to old themes and ideas from other works, but is something entirely different. It even has a new narrative structure that hasn't been seen in his novels before, usually constrained to his short stories. True, I'm not sure it works as well, but it's exciting to see him try. Ultimately, if Amanda Palmer is pushing Gaiman into new territory, I'm all for it. I may not enjoy the new work as much as I did the old, and one day it may alienate me completely. But on the other hand, if Gaiman can take moments of brilliance from this book? Which, I stress again, feel to me like some of the best writing of his career. If he can take that, and put it into something of consistent good quality, I'm guaranteeing you it'll be an instant favourite of mine.

And that is exciting!

 I really struggled with the rating of this one. Originally I wanted to give it a three, but after Ursla was introduced and everything that happened in the house with her? I was set on upping it to a four. Having slept on it though, I just can't do that in good conscience. For me, the book was too slow in the beginning and when I compare it to other works by Gaiman, or even A Shadow Over Innsmouth, which I gave a four last month, I can't say I enjoyed it as much. Perhaps part of the problem is that I'm just too invested in the author. Giving impressions on this book is impossible without linking it back to his other work, and I honestly feel that in that regard I've been fair. I'm not going to sit here and bemoan the fact it isn't American Gods, but if I was asked to recommend a Gaiman book to a friend, this would be fairly low on the list. It makes me wonder if my impressions would be different if I were less invested in his other works, if, like Amanda Palmer, I'd be raving about it from the rooftops.

But that's not me. That's not the kind of impression I can give. So from me, The Ocean at the End of the Lane gets three out of five monkeys in a hat! If you're looking for something in the style of Neil Gaiman, that's lighter on the fantasy elements and packs a real emotional punch? I'd say this is is the book for you. Unfortunately that's not quite what I'm looking for, but I still enjoyed it enough to say it was a good read.

Next month, I'm going to be forced to reign in every single pun about sheep, lambs, and jumpers that I know because we're going to be looking at the first book in the Silo trilogy, Wool.