What Tanya Wants: Feburary 2017
Tag Archives: neil gaiman
Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
Published Jan. 1, 2014
181 Pages
When a middle age man returns to his hometown in Sussex, England for a funeral, he goes to the farm at the end of the road, and begins to remember a girl name Lettie Hempstock, he met when he was seven.
Once he reaches this farm house, he remembers things from his past that maybe someone shouldn’t remember. Memories that show that everything isn’t what it seems.
Let’s jump right into this. . . .
This book was creepy and that was really the only thing that kept me reading the book. But don’t think that as a bad thing. It means that the author did his job to keep me to the end.
The entire plot of witches, and evil beings was well defined. It wasn’t too complicated but it still produced original characters. What I really loved about this book was the fact that the author was not blunt. He didn’t dumb down his writing at all. I knew what he was saying, he didn’t need to say oh she’s a witch. Gaiman wrote for intelligent readers.
There was no romance, (THANK YOU!) No one being spiteful, there pure supernatural mess. The story was slow. There was too much down time as a paranormal novel. It wasn’t as if origins was explained. It was just serious down time.
The main character lacked character. He was a simple child that was comfortable reading books and petting his cat but got caught in the wrong thing.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and the creep factor of it was a wonderful surprised. It made the book a quick read and even though it had a lot of down time, the creepiness kept it going. It has been a long time since I’ve read a Neil Gaiman book.
4 Pickles.
How Cute! Book Review: Fortunately, the Milk by Neil Gaiman
Published Sept. 17, 2013
114 Pages
This book is so adorable and perfect for kids.
Two children wake up to eat breakfast and discover that there is no milk. Their father sets out to get milk from the corner store but he takes longer than normal.
This book was more bubbly than you would expect from author Neil Gaiman. Nothing dark about it not even the aliens.
But it did stay true to his nature by adding talking dinosaurs, ponies, aliens and time travel. This a really quick read filled with great black and white illustrations done by Skottie Young.
I thought the book was really creative and really detailed, which is a trait I love from Gaiman. Although this is a short review I highly recommend this book.
Overall for a children’s book it gets a 10 out of 10.
Tania loves long walks in the park, ice cream and horror movies. When not studying communications, she is cyber stalking GCH follow her twitter here
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Book Review: Troll’s Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales by Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling
Before I begin to speak about this collection of short stories, let me explain why I picked it up. I love fairy tales and I love twisted fairy tales; so when I saw the cover of this book I said “WOW! I have to read this; it looks like it can scare me.” The cover is perfect for a twisted fairy tale or for any horror book.
With that being said I was disappointed with the book because there was nothing scary or even gross within any of the short stories. The authors range from Wendy Froud, Neil Gaiman, Garth Nix, Jane Yolen and plenty more.
I am going to take the time to mention three stories. “Wizard’s Apprentice” written by Delia Sherman was the first story that had a lot of potential about an evil wizard, who wasn’t really evil at all. Mean? Yes, but not evil. The story was well written about a boy who runs away from an abusive uncle and end up at an evil wizard’s bookshop. But the story feels cut short, obviously it’s a short story, but it doesn’t need to feel that way.
Another story called “Rags and Riches” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and this story was disappointing because it was done before. A princess takes her servant to go a new kingdom in which she is to marry the prince. The servant, when they are alone, forces the princess to swap clothing and horses, so she can pose as the princess and get all the riches and of course the prince. This is the one story that I thought lacked originality.
Finally, my last short story spotlight wasn’t a story after all but a poem called “Faery Tales” by Wendy Froud. I wasn’t expecting a poem in a short story collection; a cute poem but in my eyes not suited for a supposedly twisted fairy tale.
This collection of short stories was a bit misleading due to the title. Although there were some good stories most just didn’t click. This book gets an
5 out of 10.
Motif by Tanya 