Part of The Graveyard Book was excerpted as a short story that I read last year, and the full novel has been on my Gotta-Read List ever since.

We follow Nob, short for Nobody, from his first toddle down the hill to the old fenced in cemetery, up to his mid teen years. How did he live all that time? Simple. Or at least simple in Neil Gaiman’s world. Ghosts Mr. and Mrs. Owen took care of him. Vampire Silas made sure he was fed. His friends – all dead, all ghosts – entertained him and taught him. Nob grows up to be kind, open-hearted and no one’s fool.

The reason Nob is in the cemetery is that Jack Frost and his entire Order of Jacks hunted his family and killed them and now hunts Nob. Nob has several adventures, from dealing with a lunchroom bully to escaping from a locked room in a pawnshop, before the final reckoning with the Order of Jacks.

This isn’t a deeply serious book. You won’t find yourself thinking new thoughts (except for wondering what really goes on at night among the graves) and you won’t find Nob a character that sticks in your mind and becomes your constant companion. The Graveyard Book is a fun book in the best sense of the word.

The book is well-written with interesting dialogue and characters. There is a back story too, but we don’t see much of it. We see glimpses of the Jacks, and glimpses Silas and his his group and I want to see more. We only get that peek, a tantalizing whiff.

Gaiman won both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal for The Graveyard Book; both awards are for books written for children.  The novel will appeal to teens and older grade school children because Nob is young and kids can recognize many scenes, such as the lunch room bully, getting stuck in a room, plus the story is not overly complex.  However do not think this is solely a children’s book.  Adults will enjoy it too, and if Gaiman were to write more about the villainous Jacks we could have an enjoyable adult novel.

I recommend The Graveyard Book. It is excellent.

4 Stars

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The Graveyard Book is available from Amazon in paperback and Kindle plus hardcover and at Barnes & Noble.

The Shadow at the Gate: The Tormay Trilogy (Volume 2) is a transition book that sees Jute, the twelve year old boy who has become the personification of Wind, slowly learning his new role and Levoreth, who has been Earth, fighting for her life.

The Shadow at the Gate isn’t quite as much fun or quite as quirky and charming as the first book in the series, The Hawk and His Boy. But it is a very good read and a novel I highly recommend. It’s a little confusing with Jute running north away from Hearne, then running back to Hearne, getting captured, then slipping his way free. The path Jute took feels like the path of the wind on a breezy spring day.

My favorite character is Levoreth and I missed some of the quiet joy we saw in her scenes in book 1, The Hawk and His Boy. The Shadow at the Gate is darker with the villains coming out into the open. Jute gets more detailed, becoming a true person.

The magic is understated, not the focus of the story.  Wind, Earth, Sea and Fire are the still points of the world, guardians against the dark.  The elements, called Anboreum, are powerful but cannot win by pure power and force alone.  They must enlist help from the world and people.

Jute explores the world outside his city Hearne and one of the joys of this series is the richly imagined setting.  We see ducal courts that range from a nice, friendly big house with lots to eat, all the way to palaces full of snooty servants.  Book three continues our journey across the face of Tormay.

I immediately purchased the third book, The Wicked Day,as soon as I finished The Shadow at the Gate.

4 Stars

Please be aware that Christopher Bunn has issued all three Tormay books in a consolidated volume, A Storm In Tormay: The Complete Tormay Trilogy.

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I enjoyed Kevin Hearne’s first Iron Druid fantasy, Hounded, so much I started book 2, Hexed (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book Two), the same night. Our hero – at least the main character – Atticus O’Sullivan – manages to get himself even more deeply in trouble.

You’ll remember at the end of Hounded Atticus had killed a “god” in the Irish pantheon, a puzzling change from his 2100 year habit of avoiding the confrontation.  Now Atticus gets dragged into helping the local witch coven into removing a cult of Bacchants.  The problem?  The only way to remove Bacchants is to kill them.  Although Atticus has never seen himself being responsible to police the magic community in his long, long life, for some reason he decides to take the Bacchants on.

Atticus promises a powerful witch an apple from the Norse goddess Idunn’s tree, a gift that promises long life and eternal youth in exchange for her help with the Bacchants.

You can see where this is going, can’t you?  Atticus deeps himself ever deeper and ever more at risk by making one bad decision after another.

Some of the adversaries attack Atticus first, but every time something happens Atticus’s freedom of movement is constrained and he becomes more visible, more at risk from annoyed godlings, witch hunters, other witches and magic users.

The good thing about this plot device (increasingly lousy choices that bring up even worse alternatives) is that it plunges the characters into interesting situations and some nifty settings.  Atticus is a little better drawn in book 2 than in Hounded, as are his new apprentice Granuaile and some of the minor characters.   Hearne brings moral dimensions into the plot a few times although the general tone remains one of “I’m the good guy and everyone I’m fighting deserves it”.

Hexed is a fun, fast read and I recommend it if you go in expecting enjoyment and reasonably good writing.

Here’s a link to the blog post about Hexed, volume 1 in the Iron Druid Chronicles.

4 Stars

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