Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman ::
by William the Bloody
a review by William the Bloody
One night, the man called Jack killed a family. It was done right quick and with a knife, except the man Jack missed one. He was meant to kill all four members of the family, but he missed the baby boy. The child, inquisitive and curious, when he heard a noise from downstairs, decided to deftly scale the sides of his crib, and scuttle down the stairwell one step at a time on his diapered behind. When the curious baby saw the open front door, naturally he went outside.... and up the hill..... and through the fence gate bars into the cemetery next door. The man Jack followed the trail of the baby to the cemetery and was closing in when the resident ghosts took a shine to the toddler. Master and Mistress Owens had never had children when alive, so when the panicked and barely formed spirits of the baby's birth parents pleaded for someone to protect their baby boy from the killer who did them in, they were all too eager to accept, especially with the aid of neither alive-nor-dead but importantly corporeal Silas on their side who, with a little convincing (and probably light magic or trickery) fooled the man Jack that what he thought was a baby amoung the tombstones was in actuality a fox and maybe he ought to check down the road a spell instead? After much discussion and debate, the other ghosts of the graveyard agree that the living baby shall live with them and he is granted The Freedom of the Graveyard, meaning he is free to roam anywhere within its boarders and is gifted with many supernatural abilities such as seeing in the dark and fading (the ability to make oneself unobservable to onlookers). Mr. and Mrs. Owens raise the boy as their own child and Silas ventures into the world outside the cemetery gates to bring the boy food, toys and learning materials. This arrangement works well for many years, but a live child will often desire the company of others who live and yet the man Jack is out there, never ceasing his search for the boy he failed to kill that fateful night.
The Good: This book has an interesting premise: a baby growing up in a graveyard and raised by ghosts. What I like about it is that the cemetery is very old and that there are people from centuries past who talk to the boy and try to teach him things all from the perspective of the respective eras. Such as, the boys ghost parents cannot teach him to reach because in the time when they died, it wasn't something cabinet makers or their wives needed to learn, really. But also as a curious child he find Latin epitaphs on tombstones and has an old Roman translate them for him, which I thought was cute and neat. I like the way the storytelling jumps ahead in years to significant points in the boy's life. I especially liked his friendship with a young girl when he was five and her parents deciding the boy in the cemetery must be her imaginary friend. I also quite liked his relationship with the witch's ghost. That was real sweet. Many of the characters were really interesting and fun to read.
The Bad: I didn't care much of the goings-on in the ghoul gate chapter. Sure, quite a bit was important plot wise, but it really felt shoehorned in. I don't know, maybe it needed a little bit more padding around the edges? It just felt so out of place, all that stuff and it went on for far too long for my taste. Don't get me wrong, I like how those ideas came together with the climax at the end, but we really didn't need ALL of that for it, now did we? I think he was going for that added step of child fantasy, but it severely took me out of the story. Blegh. For shame on the author for using The Name Trick! I don't want to get into spoilers here, but I have fallen victim to this device too many times in the past that I actually DID see this switcheroo coming. So I was disappointed a bit (but I'm sure its intended audience of youngsters will probably still be surprised).
This book may not be the massive epic that harry Potter is, but it is right up there on par with the fantasy and supernatural elements and a boy who lives in another, fantastical and supernatural world. If you have a youngster who enjoys that sort of story, then they are sure to love Graveyard Book as well! It's lightly illustrated and makes for a swell night-to-night bedtime story read (and hunting for the Ghoul's Gate on a cemetery trip might be a fun little game... if you're the sort to take your kids to cemeteries, and why shouldn't you be?). But I also had a fun time to read it, so you may as well.
A
