The Story

There’s this kid – Nobody Owens – and from the moment some dude named Jack murders his family when Nobody is a little baby, Nobody has lived in a local graveyard. Here, his family is a whole bunch of ghosts, his guardian is a vampire, his teacher is a werewolf, and he gets very little interaction with real human beings.

The Response

I’m a little afraid about how my response to this one is going to go over. Because a lot of people love this book. And rave about it. And are huge Neil Gaiman fangirls/fanboys. And … well, to be quite honest, I really did not like this book. I think there was a span of 5 pages where I thought to myself, “Okay! This is where the book is going to get GOOOOOOD.” Only then, after those 5 pages ended, well, it went back to being not so enjoyable.

And that makes me sad.

The story was boring. It wasn’t dark like I had expected it. It felt more like it wanted to be dark. It touched upon dark situations – suicide, for example – but pretty much just mentions them and doesn’t explore them. There wasn’t a dark atmosphere for the book, even though it takes place in a graveyard. Goodness, even death isn’t REALLY explored. Yes, there are ghosts… but it doesn’t even really talk about death.

And then the characters. Well. They were flat. There was nothing about any of them to actually make me care about them. Not Bod, not Silas, not the Owenses… the only one that held any interest to me whatsoever was the ghost witch Liza. And she was in it for very little of the book. Yes, there was massive character development throughout the book for Bod – which is to be expected considering the fact that this book takes place over the first I-don’t-know-how-many years of his life. There would have to be character development. But because each chapter takes place at a different period in Bod’s life, you don’t really SEE it happening – you just know that it did.

Bod just didn’t seem to really care about anything. When what’s-her-name was mentioning that Silas perhaps doesn’t want to tell Bod about who killed his parents, he matter-of-factly agreed that it was because he would go after the person. When he has to leave the graveyard finally, he doesn’t seem to care that he’s going to never see most of those people who were there with him his whole life. There’s no passion in him for anything – or at least anything that is shown in the book.

The Bottom Line

All in all, I found this disappointing. I had wanted to like it, but it didn’t do anything for me. Thus, would not recommend it.

Other Reviews

Mostly Harmless, The Written World, One Librarian’s Book Reviews, Things Mean a Lot, Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On, Stella Matutina, Back to Books. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

This week for Listed, I wanted to get some Death involved. (Haha, how morbid does that sound?) There are a lot of boks where Death himself (or herself) is a character, and I wanted to feature ten of those books here.

1. Discworld by Terry Pratchett. First appears in The Colour of Magic. Originally Published 1983. LT.
2. The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Originally Published 2005. LT.
3. Katura and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt. Originally Published 2006. LT.
4. The Sandman series by Neil Gaiman. First appears in Preludes and Nocturnes. Originally Published 1991. LT.
5. Death’s Daughter by Amber Benson. Originally Published 2009. LT.
6. Damned if you Do by Gordon Houghton. Originally Published 2000. LT.
7. Death with Interruptions by José Saramago. Originally Published 2005. LT.
8. Death: A Life by George Pendle. Originally Published 2008. LT.
9. Grave Witch by Kalayna Price. Originally Published 2010. LT.
10. Hunger by Jackie Morse Kessler. Originally Published 2010. LT.

What other books where Death has become and actual character can you think of?

Do you like this feature? You should also check out Librarian’s Book Reviews’ Listless Monday, A Bookshelf Monstrosity’s Books By A Theme and Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog’s Birdwatching.

The Story

So! There’s this well-off guy in Australia – Fisher. And one day – Bam! He’s disappeared.

In walks Mr. Smith, the friendly neighbour in charge of Fisher’s estate (whenever Fisher is out of town). He tells this story about how Fisher went to England for a while. Everyone buys that… until drunk old Ben Weir sees Fisher’s ghost sitting on the side of the road.

Of course, the first time he sees this, everyone just believes it’s the drink making him seeing things. Because why would Fisher’s ghost be hanging around here, if he’s alive and well in England? But! The next time he sees the ghost, he is stone cold sober, so obviously it wasn’t just a drunken vision he saw.

So! Old Ben, the town magistrate, and an Aboriginal investigate the sighting of the ghost – and what do you think they find? Fisher’s very-dead body in the middle of a pond!

End of the story, turns out, is that Mr. Smith killed Fisher with a tomahawk – chopped out all his brains – and we don’t know if Fisher’s ghost is ever seen again, but Mr. Smith is brought to justice and everything ends happy for everyone except Mr. Smith (who gets hanged).

The Response

What I really liked about this story was the fact that it takes place in Australia and includes Aborigines. I’ve never read anything with this group of people in it before, but am definitely intrigued – I’d like to read more with them in it, so if anyone has any recommendations, it would be greatly appreciated.

In fact, I’ve never read any gothic novels that take place in Australia… actually, the only books that I’ve read that take place in Australia that I can think of are a couple of YA books. Weird.

This is the first story in this collection that doesn’t take place in England, from as far as I can tell. It was a good change of scenery. I had actually thought that the book only contained stories from England and English authors, so I was quite surprised. What surprises me, though, is that … well, when you read books from different countries, the author often includes slang or various inflections that are specific to that region… but that wasn’t the case in this story. I did a bit of research on the author, and he spent some of his time in England (and worked with the British East India Company sometimes when he wasn’t in England) so that could be the reason for the language being so very similar to everything else in this collection.

The Bottom Line

Not a bad story. Has made me curious about other books taking place in Australia.