Book Review: Anansi Boys

Recently it's been a bit more convenient for me to get to my Maryland library system than the DC one so I've gone back through my ever-too-long to-read list and grabbing a few things from the early parts of it. I can actually specifically remember where this recommendation came from, back in the livejournal days I wrote about a book I had just read which was a collaboration between Gaiman and someone else and I thought it was pretty bad. It was a failed tv pilot involving people from alternate worlds but the catch was that every single one of them was essentially the same person, literally a group of chosen people that was all the same person. I mentioned that if this was my first exposure to Gaiman I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about so a friend of mine kindly posted a few recommendations for his best-loved books and they've sat on my list ever since.  

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

Radio Drama Review: Good Omens

Since I enjoyed the radio drama adaptation of Neverwhere a couple of years back I was rather interested to hear that the BBC would be adapting another of Neil Gaiman's works, this time one co-written with Terry Prachett (I have somehow managed to read only one other of both of their works which is almost remarkable by now). Since Good Omens was already on my to-read list I decided last August to go ahead and read it anyway and then, when I could still remember most of the book but not the finer details, listen to the Christmas-timed broadcast, although I ended up so behind that I didn't get to the broadcast until well after the new year....

Good Omens

Radio Drama Review: Neverwhere

These days I spend a lot of time in front of a computer screen working on homework and while sometimes I don't want to listen to anything and just want to focus on my homework often I do want something playing in the background. I prefer podcasts to music, since it's too easy to end up fussing over music and not getting anything done, but after burning through a dozen podcast episodes in a few days I enjoy listening to something else and radio dramas are just the thing. Sadly I know of basically no other radio dramas (the only other one I listened to regularly, the Fruits Basket fan one, seems to have died again) and have no idea where to start looking for recommendations so when the adaption of Neil Gaiman's book Neverwhere popped up on the BBC website I gladly gave that a listen.


Neverwhere


Summary: Richard Mayhew was living a fairly average life in London when he takes in an injured young woman off the streets for the night. Come the next day he's discovered that no one seems to notice him and that those who do have no idea who he is. He manages to track the woman down again (Door) and she tells him that since he helped someone from London Below, which is quite literally what it sounds like, the people of London Above won't notice him as well anymore and with no better options he joins Door on her quest of revenge for her family's death and hopes that he'll find a way to return to his former life in the process. 

The Good: I hadn't realized at first that this story was based on an actual novel (erm, that was adapted from a tv series apparently), I thought it had been written as a radio play, and it seems to have been adapted rather smoothly. There are enough details, both spoken and as sound effects, to set the scene and it's easy to tell who is in what scenes and when the story has switched from one character's point of view to another. The acting was rather nice as well, I never had trouble figuring out what emotions any of the characters were going through, despite the lack of facial cues, and yet it never felt like the actors were overacting and hamming it up to make those emotions clear. Finally, while the podcasts I listen do don't have terrible production values by any stretch of the imagination, they clearly have people working on them who know how to work the equipment and what to do in post-production, there was still a noticeable difference switching between those and these episodes. There's a richness  to all the sounds which may be simply from having more advanced equipment or might be from having actual sound engineers to work on the show. Regardless, this sounds great in every respect, from the acting to the foley and other sound-effects, if this is the level of quality most BBC radio productions have then I really want to track down more of them. 

The Bad: There were a few minutes for multiple characters that just felt, well, rather odd for them. There's a turncoat character whose reasons I never quite found to be understandable, I of course knew how Richard's story would end but still felt like it was a little too neat (which might have been more of a result of condensed pacing than anything else) and other small moments like these. I also wish that the story had explained a little better why people in London Above stopped noticing Richard (the story might have explained it and I just missed it or it could all just be a very unsubtle metaphor for people not noticing the homeless and such, although I don't think that's quite right either), although I was fine with how the rest of the magic in the story worked.


I suppose another bad thing is that while the BBC website has the first five episodes up and will until mid-March next year they only had the final episode up for one week and I'm not sure where people can listen to it. I would imagine that they'll have a complete set for download on itunes or maybe even produce a CD sometime later this year but it does seem like a bit of a strange strategy. Regardless, I give this production 3.5 stars out of 5 and if anyone knows of any other great radio dramas (I believe the director also did the recent radio drama of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I would love to hear) by all means comment and tell me about them!  

Book Review: Interworld

I realized recently that I haven't read much Neil Gaiman but what I've read of him it sounds like I'd like his books pretty well (the only one I can think of off hand that I've read is Stardust but even that was only because I saw the movie and wanted to see how they compared). So when I saw he was co-author for this book at the local library I looked at the flap and then tossed it into my bag. In the back of the book he says that he and the other author (Michael Reeves) originally were trying to get it made into a tv series and, while I'm not sure how the pacing would've worked out for a serialized tv show, I would totally watch a tv show that was like this.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reeves

I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at here (I see a boy's face but why are we following the rule of thirds?) but the colors and movement caught my eye so it works as a cover.

Summary: Joey is kind of person who (literally) gets lost in his own house so it should've been a bad sign when he actually knew where he was on a school trip. However he was too busy getting lost again to realize that in the process of getting lost he Walked across dimensions and set off dozens of alarms set by people who want that power of travel for themselves. Not long later he's managed to make it even worse and now has to learn how to fight or risk death by being boiled alive or frozen alive by the enemy, your pick which is worse.

The Good: The basic premise for the plot, walking between worlds, is nothing new* but the world building is solid. I'd love to see this as a tv show just to see the setting of some of the places, like the Inbetween which sounded trippy and pretty innovative. The idea that everyone else who can Walk is essentially Joey from another world (which begs the question, does that mean there's only one person in each world who can do that?) was neat and managed to make sense in an odd way as well. And there's a small scene between Joey and his mom that I really liked, finally an adult in a MG/YA book that DOESN'T act like an idiot and seems to just get what's going on. Actually, if there's a sequel to this book, I hope they expand on her a little more, there was something about her character that screamed "there's more to me than you think but we're not gonna tell you yet!" and I'm intrigued.

The Bad: My summary up there is a lot less spoilery than the one on the book jacket and, while the book jacket doesn't give away details, it's a fairly straightforward plot so I felt cheated out of a story for just reading that. It's just one rather simple plot, following the plot progression diagram I once read in a how to draw manga book, and it didn't surprise me at all. That was a bit disappointing since, while the book was interesting and I read it in almost one big go, I don't have any reason to want to reread it (and therefore buy it). I also never ended up liking Joey, I kept yelling at him to stop being stupid, and that is more than a little problem.


So, the book was alright but not fantastic (which seems to be the general consensus on amazon as well) and I wonder if it has/has plans for a sequel. I can see it going either way and I'll poke around a little to see if I can find any info on it.
And I actually have another review to post in a day or two, it's not another book so I don't have to get so bent out of shape for reviewing the same medium two times in a row, and this one is rather, interesting let's say.

*Hell I think I came up with something like that when I was in the seventh grade, which ironically enough would be just outside what Amazon tells me is the reading age group.