Neil Gaiman: Anansi Boys (2005)

Edition: Review, 2005
Review number: 1309

Neil Gaiman's new novel is not a sequel to American Gods, but it shares a setting and many of the ideas behind the earlier story. There is one shared character, in a way: Anansi the trickster spider from African myth, a major source for the stories of Brer Rabbit that might be more familiar to many Westerners. The premise of Anansi Boys is that Anansi is dead, and his son Charlie, a London-based accountant, has to come to terms with who his father was, at the same time discovering that he has a brother who has inherited his father's supernatural powers, yet seems to want to take over Charlie's dull life.

Generally, the tone is quite light - this is Gaiman's sunniest novel to date with the possible exception of Pratchett collaboration Good Omens. This is true even though the original Anansi stories have a definite nasty side. The originals, some of which are retold here, are generally about practical jokes, which can really only be excused because they show the underdog winning by his cleverness - after all, what chance does a spider have against a tiger physically?

Perhaps because it is lacking in good ideas, Anansi Boys does not seem as good as American Gods. It's purpose is less serious, however; it is meant to entertain, and it does so magnificently. It does seem more Tom Holt than Neil Gaiman; not necessarily a bad thing, but not what I expected.

At the end of the book, there is a short series of appendices, explicitly compared to the extras that appear on DVDs. As there, some are more interesting than other; a deleted scene and a short interview with Gaiman add to the novel, while the banal questions for book groups don't. One good thing about the deleted scene is that it shows that Gaiman is willing to cut out good bits if they don't fit in to the flow of the novel, something that many of today's fantasy authors could do well to copy.

Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001)

Edition: Headline, 2001
Review number: 1107

The relationship between the existence of gods and people's belief in them has interested several fantasy writers (Zelazny, Cabell and Pratchett among them), and the answers they have come up with are generally similar (when people stop believing, the gods in question dwindle and die). Gaiman has used the same idea to inspire a fantasy on a large scale, one which is really about life in modern America. For behind the scenes America is full of gods - all those brought over by worshippers from overseas: from Ireland, Scandinavia, Egypt and West Africa (and of course the Amerindian gods as well). But now that their worshippers have almost entirely abandoned them, for the new gods of consumer products, TV and technology. The stage is set for one last confrontation between the bloody and visceral gods of the past and the soulless deities of the future.

The central character in American Gods is a man named Shadow. In prison after a bar fight, he is allowed out early when his wife is killed in a car accident. He travels unhappily back to his home town, and on the journey is offered a job by a strange man named Wednesday. He is soon introduced to the strange dark world behind the facade of America. There are inescapable parallels between the world revealed to Shadow and that experienced by Richard Mayhew in Gaiman's earlier fantasy Neverwhere - the same idea that the supernatural is a dark world all around us that we normally ignore - but the two are very different characters.

In the end, American Gods is only partially successful. It comes close to greatness in places, but Gaiman seems to be unable to decide exactly what he wants to say about American culture; his own feelings are presumably ambivalent. This weakens several parts of the novel, even though it could have been made a strength. Echoes of Americana by other writers give a strong sense of place, even if they make much of the novel seem like a homage to Twin Peaks. Gaiman makes the reader feel even though he is a very good writer, he has never actually achieved his potential; he always seems to pull his punches.

On the cover of the Headline edition of American Gods is the rather gimmicky offer "As good as Stephen King or your money back". That marks out the comparison that the publishers want readers to make - so is it that good? I last read King about twenty years ago, in my early teens (probably the best age to read his novels). The fact that I still feel that I remember those I read is testimony to their effectiveness, but I never felt any great urge to read more. What King excels at is surface; his novels are as a result chilling and exciting. Gaiman, to me, has deeper ideas but these are not put over so forcefully - his language is more poetic. I have never felt that King could have gone on to create a classic (particularly since much of his writing seems to be merely an updating of classic horror ideas), but Gaiman clearly could do so.

Neil Gaiman: Smoke and Mirrors (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 790

In a lengthy, unthemed collection of short stories, it is to be expected that the preoccupations of an author will be more obvious than might be the case in any individual novel. Neil Gaiman's first collection is not an exception, and showcases both his talents and shortcomings as a writer.

The main strengths of Gaiman's writing are unusual imagination and the ability to convey that imagination. This is particularly the case with the stories which are re-tellings of familiar tales - Snow White from the point of view of the stepmother, for example.

The major weakness is that he has too great a desire to introduce an unexpected twist into each story. When one is encountered individually, this will obviously help it to stand out and remain in the memory. In thirty or so all read together, it does become a little tiresome.

A large number of the stories are narrative poems, and some of them are pretty good; but the quality of the poetry is variable, and some of them just seem to be strangely formatted prose. The best stories in the collection are those which are rather different from the others; these include the short short In The End and heavenly crime story Murder Mysteries.

Neil Gaiman: Stardust (1999)

Edition: Headline, 1999
Review number: 677

Stardust is a remarkable homage to Lord Dunsany and other Victorian writers of tales about the lands "beyond the fields we know". Wall is much like other isolated English villages of the mid nineteenth century, except for the wall which gives it its name and for the unusual fair held there once every nine years. That is the only time that the gap in the wall is left unguarded, and sellers of all kinds of wonders come from the land of Faerie beyond the wall.

Tristram Thorn is typical of the village's young men, and like the rest of them he has fallen in love with the local beauty, Victoria Forester. While he is walking with her, they see a star fall in Faerie, and she promises him his heart's desire if he retrieves it for her. The plot seems to develop along standard fairy tale lines until he reaches the star, which turns out to be a young woman with a broken leg from the fall and not the stone he was expecting. To bring back a young woman - who objects strongly - instead of an inanimate object is not the task he expected, and it is from this point that Stardust begins to offer a new slant on a familiar idea.

There is the odd joke here and there, and Stardust is generally a light-hearted novel, but it is atmospheric as well. The major characters are believable, and the whole thing manages to delight in the way that the best children's fiction does while being clearly an adult novel. It works far better than Neverwhere, where Gaiman is struggling to describe what is a strongly visual experience without swamping the rest of the ingredients of the novel.

Neil Gaiman: Neverwhere (1996)

Edition: BBC Books, 1996
Review number: 375

The television series on which this novel is based was not greatly liked by critics; a little strange, for it was one of the more innocative pieces of TV science fiction/fantasy to be shown for a long time. Most SF on TV, from Star Trek onwards, is rather backward looking, reflecting ideas that were new and interesting in written works over a decade earlier. Neverwhere , on the other hand, starts from an interesting idea. Having a fantastic world which is around our real one but beyond our perception in some way is not a new basis for a fantasy novel - it is hinted at in parts of The Hobbit, for example - but to equate that fantastic world with the lives of the urban homeless is a bold stroke.

This background enables Gaiman to subtly shame the viewer/reader for the way that most in our society ignore the homeless; no one is more invisible than a beggar in the Strand. It also gives a gritty realism to London Below, to contrast with the rather fanciful personifications of tube stations found there (the angel, Islington; the earl who holds court on a train; the black friars).

However, this came over better in the original series, which was incredibly well designed. The book version seems rather thin on plot by comparison. Without the direct images from the screen, the suspension of disbelief becomes harder, and some parts of the story become a little too reminiscent of Gaiman's comic book background (the exaggerated violence of Croup and Vandemar, for instance).

Neverwhere is a worthwhile novel, but the TV version is better.