The Ocean at the End of the Lane Review

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

2013

 

To be completely honest, I was rather disappointed with this book. I suppose part of it may be due its hype of being the new Neil Gaiman book, plus, I suppose, the hype of Gaiman himself, because I definitely expected better. Admittedly, the only other book of his I've read was Coraline, and that was years ago and also for children, but I'm aware of him and his works and I guess I just expected better, particularly as this is billed as an adult book, though between the language and content, I'm not really sure why. I could see this better placed as YA--it's not like they'd lose the adult market anyway.

Basically, a middle-aged man, returns to his childhood home and flashesback to his childhood, specifically an incident that occurred when he was seven years old. As child, a man boarding in his family home kills himself which somehow unleashes a terror upon the boy and he must turn to a witchy, tri-generational trinity of women (and girl) who live at the end of the lane.

The story was interesting enough, though, in my humblest of opinions, it felt very similar to Coraline,  particularly with the recurring childhood vs adulthood dichotomy. And while I've got nothing against that theme, by the end of the book, it almost felt as though he were beating us over the head with it. By the time we get to the ending, it's like okay, I get it, adults are lame and boring and don't listen to reason and ruin things and childhood is better because imagination and fun! Which is another reason I think this would appeal better to a YA audience. Also, it's suppose to be "horror", and from an adult perspective it really wasn't that scary. Although to be fair, I had also just read Junji Ito's Uzumaki, and that's about as terrifying as it gets.

The main problem I had with the story was that it just didn't feel fleshed out. The entire book is under 200 pages and while quantity is no guarantee of quality, in this case, there just wasn't enough content. The "Acknowledgements" states that this grew from what was originally a short story, and I think it definitely reflects that. Really, it feels more like an intermediate draft between the short story and a full novel...perhaps Neil was getting a little too close to the deadline? The storyline just didn't come off as terribly creative, though it definitely had the potential to be if there had been a greater level of detail. As it was, I felt very little connection to any of the characters nor did I ever get a really good feel for the world it takes place in. Of course, the writing itself was no help, as it, too, seemed lacking.

His sentence structure was rather stilted which ruined the flow--they were either too long, or too short, or oddly broken up, and repetitious. For instance, there is a paragraph on page 18 in which all five sentences begin with the word "It". And I think he may have chosen this stylistically to emphasis the "It-ness" of the subject, but at the same time, it just doesn't flow well. And then there's this lovely sentence (emphasis mine):

"We pushed our way into a clump of trees, and through the clump of trees into a wood, and squeezed our way through trees too close together, their foliage a thick canopy above our heads."

If this had been a singular example, it would probably have been forgivable, but the thing is, it. kept. happening. Later on there's: 

"Lettie walked and I walked beside her" and also "...its shadow perfectly positioned to cast nightmare shadows on the wall..." just to point out a few.

To be fair, the editors are probably also partially to blame, as the point of having editors is to catch things like this. Though I'm wondering, if perhaps publication was rushed just because they knew it would sell regardless of the editing because it's Neil Gaiman (which might also explain that "intermediary" feel I mentioned above).

 Of course, I'm not necessarily turned off of Gaiman because of this. According to my sister, Stardust is quite good, and she is one who's opinion I can trust. I've also flipped through American Gods, which looks to be much better and is on my To-Read list. Really, what I found the most disappointing was that this book could have been so, so, much better because there were some really interesting quotes and ideas that just needed some more depth (and editing). I'll say it again, this book comes off as a draft, not a finished novel. But, I suppose every author has his hits and misses, and this one happens to be a miss.

As short at it was, still not really worth the time it takes to read it. 2.5/5 Fancies.

Read Instead: The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
                        A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

The War at Ellsmere/Zombies Calling Review

DUO REVIEW! Because both of these are short, graphic novels, written by Faith Erin Hicks, that I read over the course of a half an hour, it seemed better sense to stick them together. This is a little tough because I have met Ms. Hicks and she is super fun and super nice so I don't want it to seem like I'm just gushing (even though I am, a bit, because I just love her art), but I also don't want to say less than positive things because she is super fun and super nice. Luckily, she hasn't given me reason to say too many less-than-positive things.

The War at Ellsmere

2008

Juniper (Jun) is the new scholarship student at prestigious (and expensive) Ellsmere Academy. She befriends her roommate, the weird girl, and goes head to head with the bitchy rich girl who is mean to everyone.

Okay, so maybe that description doesn't quite do the story justice. So, We've all seen this plot before. But then, technically, we've see EVERY plot before. At this point, it's all about execution. I always tend to give graphic novels a bit more leeway in terms of literary ability because I feel like they exist in a space where it's slightly easier for me to suspend my belief because of the pretty, pretty art.

I suppose my main beef is that it's so short! There was good build-up, and while the wrap-up was cohesive and mostly comprehensive, I feel like there could have been more. More build up! More character depth! MORE PRETTY PRETTY ART. It seemed this story really just scratched the surface of the characters and the setting and then it was suddenly over. I think there could have been a lot more to it and the ending does seems a little contrived, though Hicks has admitted this herself. But it's a fun, quick, read.

Read-a-Likes: The Dreaming by Queenie Chan

 

 Zombies Calling 

2007

So we jump forward from high school to college in this one. I'll admit, when I first picked this book up, my initial reaction was "Oh god, another zombie book?" Because lets be honest, I feel like zombies have reached a certain market saturation point. But Zombies Calling is fully aware of this and part of the point is that the characters are aware of and utilize zombie-tropes.

Joss loves zombie movies and has the "rules" of the genre memorized. Which is lucky for her because suddenly there's a zombie outbreak on her college campus and now she and her friends have to try to stay alive, using the "Rules" of zombie movies that Joss knows.

It's a pretty simple story and delivers exactly what it promises.As with The War at Ellsmere, the story has a decent amount of build-up, but then the ending sort of rushes on, right after a great deal of exposition about what it all means. This is her first (formally) published book (Ellsmere was second), and she says her main goal with this book was so that she could have some tangible piece of accomplishment at the time, and so with that in mind she met her goal.

I would definitely say that she has improved as a writer and an artist, and if you're interested in getting in to her work, start with her graphic novel Friends with Boys, which is a later work of hers and reflects how she has stylistically grown.

I'd say 2.5/5 for both, but toss in an extra .5 for the art so 3/5 Fancies.

Stay Awake Review

Stay Awake - Dan Chaon
2012

 This was sort of my re-bound book from Miss Peregrine because it had gotten me all worked up for something spooky and then didn't fill my spook-quota. I found this title on Goodread's Best Horror of 2012 list and it looked creepy enough and happened to be in the library, so I gave it a shot.

First off, it's not horror as you traditionally think of horror, like spooks and monsters and demon-children. It's a collection of short stories and while some of them  reference or hint at the supernatural, nothing is totally confirmed. Despite this, I still found it rather creepy because it's dismal and bleak, and there were overriding themes of dead babies, birth defects, widowed/ex-spouses, murdered children, etc,...but all very muted and kind of in the background of the story, such as: "The baby dies and there is a little funeral" and then the story is about the parents, which has a sad, haunting quality to it, rather than someone opening a box and finding dead babies, which is more of the shock & horror approach. These were apparently written over a period of time and published individually in journals prior to this collection, so don't be surprised if something oddly specific like...I don't know, losing your finger while falling off a ladder, happens more than once. The funny thing about collections is that you sometimes read stories in conjunction with stories that weren't meant to be together.

As a creative writing major and as an intern at a literary magazine, I've read and analyzed a lot of short fiction and I am of the camp that believes short stories do not necessarily have to have a definite, conclusive, "the butler did it" ending. I think that short stories can get away with vague, open, conclusions (as long as they are well written, of course). This book is full of those kinds of endings, so if you're the kind of person who wants to know exactly what it was all about and you want stories that end (and there's nothing wrong with that, matter of taste), you will not like this book. But I liked it.

Admittedly, I feel like some of the stories may have ended too vaguely--like I was just getting into it, and suddenly it was over. But then there were those that really worked well, such as: "To Psychic Underworld:", "The Bees," and "The Farm. The Gold. The Lily-White Hands." If you think you might pick up this book to try one of the stories, I heartily endorse that last one. It's the final in the collection and a good example why you should always leave the best for last.

 I had initially averaged this book out to 3/5, but then, the final story just blew me away and so I racked it up to 3.5/5.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Review

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children - Ransom Riggs

2011

You see this creepy-as-all-hell cover and then you see the book is smattered with these weird and freaky vintage photos and you think “This looks like one spooky book!” And the inside flap continues to lead you along that track—horrific tragedies! Abandoned houses! Dead children! Wales! If that’s what you’re looking for…just flip through the pictures and put together your own story in your head because I guarantee you it will be 10x scarier than this book.

I feel like so much more went into the marketing and package of the book than into the actual content of the story. The cover is nice and eerie, the end paper and title pages are full-color (or rather, black and brown, but that’s more color than most books get), the paper's thick, and of course, there are those creepy photos throughout. It even has a book trailer. But no matter how fancily you wrap up a dead bird, it is still a dead bird.

 So, Jacob's grandfather likes to tell these stories about how when he was a child he was sent away from home to an orphanage on a Welsh island, he was accompanied by other "peculiar" children and supposedly kept safe from "monsters". As Jacob grows from wondrous child to petulant teen he realizes that his grandfather's tales are probably just tall tales. Then his grandfather is horrifically killed in an "accident" and Jacob heads off to Wales to visit his grandfather's old home as a form of closure. But it soon becomes apparent that his grandfather was telling the truth all this time. That's about as far as I can go without spoiling anything and that's about as far as the blurb goes also. But if you think this is going to be some really creepy ghost story, I'll save you some time. It's not.

 When I first saw the book, read the summary, and heard a bunch of reviews talk about how scary it was, I was really hoping for something like The Orphanage. What I got was just another YA supernatural fantasy, complete with tacked-on romance, unsupervised precocious teens, and a sequel in the making.

I'm not angry, I'm just very disappointed. Okay, and a little bit angry.

Admittedly, I don't read all that much YA (and this book is one of the many reasons why), but I can tell when a book is written at a lower level but written well versus when a book is just poorly written. Unfortunately, I have to say this book fits the latter. But the really frustrating thing is that it didn't start off that way. Riggs clearly knows how to write, as least some of the time. And I did actually finish the book, which I guess says something. Even when it became apparent that this book was not what I was looking for, I kept going because I still wanted answers (I won't be reading the sequel, though). However, as the book progressed, the quality of the writing seemed to decline. Maybe Riggs and his editor were getting too close to deadline or something because by the end, his sentences, dialogue, and plot points were just downright sloppy. Also I find it hard to believe that a 16-year-old in "gifted" classes, who uses words like torpor and soporific, has never heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson and lacks the ability to draw basic conclusions from fairly obvious clues. It's like Riggs couldn't decide whether this was an older teen or a middle grade book and then kind of failed at both.

Then there’s the matter of the pictures, which Riggs seems to use as a crutch, except that it’s a broken crutch. Rather than giving us a description of some characters, he would simply say something like “They looked like their picture” INSERT PICTURE. But the problem with this is that he’s not consistent. When he introduces us to one character, he tells us he recognizes her from a picture, and proceeds to show us a rather blurry, unclear photo of what I thought was a ten-year-old girl. And so I assumed this character was a ten-year-old girl, until pages later it became apparent that she was a teenage girl. The same thing happens with another character. We’re given a picture, in lieu of a description, of a little boy. And then later on, we’re given another picture of him only this one shows a much older boy. WHICH IS IT RIGGS? And then there’s the actual incorporation of the photos. Riggs describes the picture “It has this in it and with this and looked like this” and then we’d get to see the picture which just felt very…pointless. What I really didn't like, though, is that he gives an explanation for the oddities in each picture which diminishes their creep-factor. I don’t think Riggs realizes that not-knowing is far scarier than having a detailed explanation for everything, especially when the explanation itself isn’t all that scary.

There's so much more I could say against this book, but that would be spoil it and make this review longer than I'm sure anyone cares to read, suffice to say (hint: mild spoiler coming up), Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is yet another incarnation of X-Men/Harry Potter/Charlie Bone, and a poor one at that. If you're cool with that kind of story, then go ahead and read it because you'll probably enjoy it more than I did.

  Speaking of twins, 2/5 Fancies. 

Read Instead: A Dark Dividing by Sarah Rayne