Ugh...
Currently struggling through Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman's first novel.
Reading it, I can't help but feel as if I am missing something. People do bizarre things and have weird abilities, but nothing is ever explained, and I'm left scratching my head and wondering wtf is going on (shut up, peanut gallery). It reads sort of like a bad fanfic; this is worlds away from American Gods.
Apparently, the book is based on a TV series or something Gaiman had a hand in writing.
Now normally I love this sort of setting (hidden world of magic and fantasy and etc., in this case existing side by side and under...and above...the major cities of the world. Random people have random powers, and everyone and everything is out to kill you. And the main character is a fairly unlikable cowardly moronic weakling who doesn't even BEGIN to grow a backbone until the book's halfway through, around the time he gets dead drunk on maybe an inch of wine from Atlantis. Yeah...
Anyway, I've still got about a third of the book to go, and I'm really hoping it gets better. If I had run across this first instead of American Gods, I never would have picked up another one of his books.
Reading it, I can't help but feel as if I am missing something. People do bizarre things and have weird abilities, but nothing is ever explained, and I'm left scratching my head and wondering wtf is going on (shut up, peanut gallery). It reads sort of like a bad fanfic; this is worlds away from American Gods.
Apparently, the book is based on a TV series or something Gaiman had a hand in writing.
Now normally I love this sort of setting (hidden world of magic and fantasy and etc., in this case existing side by side and under...and above...the major cities of the world. Random people have random powers, and everyone and everything is out to kill you. And the main character is a fairly unlikable cowardly moronic weakling who doesn't even BEGIN to grow a backbone until the book's halfway through, around the time he gets dead drunk on maybe an inch of wine from Atlantis. Yeah...
Anyway, I've still got about a third of the book to go, and I'm really hoping it gets better. If I had run across this first instead of American Gods, I never would have picked up another one of his books.