The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

I had planned on continuing with the comedic trilogy of Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint and Cat's Cradle but since the library had The Graveyard Book available, I pounced on that instead. I remember Gaiman first mentioning it on his blog years ago and continued to read about it on his blog since then. I've been wanting to read it since it was published in September but never did for one reason or another. Like Interworld, it's geared at "Young Adults" so it's fairly short and quick to read. Unlike Interworld, it was actually intended to be a book, and Gaiman has another 10 years and several novels (including the very good American Gods and excellent Anansi Boys) under his belt. Even 50 pages in I can tell The Graveyard Book is pretty special.

Interworld Finished

Wrapped up Interworld last night and came away underwhelmed. It had some cool ideas, but the characters were pretty forgettable (particularly the villains). It might've made for a cool cartoon show, as it was originally conceived (and the novel certainly reads like a pilot episode) but the end didn't leave me wanting more. I'm a Neil Gaiman fan so I had to read it, but if for whatever reason Gaiman and Reaves ever wrote another one, I'd skip it.

Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves

Kicking off the New Year (and this blog) is my first book of 2009. Kind of worked out nice that I finished my last book (Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles) on New Year's Eve. Interworld has been on my list of books to read since I started keeping an actual list a couple years ago. Many books have been added to that list and subsequently read, but Interworld kept getting passed over.

As a regular reader of Neil Gaiman's blog I always thought it was odd that he never really spoke about it, whereas he had been talking about his recently released The Graveyard Book for years. Researching it just now it's apparently because the book was actually written about ten years ago, long before Gaiman started his blog, and was originally conceived as an animated film/series.

I'm already sixty or seventy pages into it, and it seems like a pretty quick read, so I can't imagine it'll take more than a couple days. It is targeted toward the YA market after all.