Book Review 64: The Graveyard Book

“For good or for evil -- and I firmly believe that it is for good -- Mrs. Owens and her husband have taken this child under their protection. It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will,” said Silas, “take a graveyard.”

Page 23

“The Graveyard Book” is a young adult novel by Neil Gaiman that readers of all ages can enjoy.

The book tells the story of Nobody Owens, or “Bod,” as he grows up in a graveyard near his house. Each chapter tells a different story, and in each one, Bod is a little older. His decisions and actions reflect his aging as we follow him into adolescence.

Bod first comes to the graveyard when he’s barely a toddler. His parents and siblings are killed by a knife wielding assassin. Fortunately for Bod, he wanders out of his home during the silent attack and makes his way into the graveyard. The ghosts and other paranormal denizens of the graveyard decide to take him in, protect him, and raise him as best they can. The ghosts of the Owens’ become his parents, and Silas, whose nature is left vague for much of the novel, but who is more corporeal and can leave the graveyard, becomes his guardian and sees to his education.

Sleep my little babby-oh
Sleep until you waken
When you’re grown you’ll see the world
If I’m not mistaken.
Kiss a lover,
Dance a measure,
Find your name
and buried treasure...

And Mrs. Owens sang all that before she discovered she had forgotten how the song ended. She had a feeling that the final line was something in the way of “and some hairy bacon,” but that might have been another song altogether, so she stopped and instead she sang him the one about the Man in the Moon who came down too soon, and, after that she sang, in her warm county voice, a more recent song abut a lad who put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and she had just started a long ballad about a young county gentleman whose girlfriend had for no particular reason, poisoned him with a dish of spotted eels, when Silas came around the side of the chapel, carrying a cardboard box.

Page 26

Bod grows up in the graveyard and picks up ghostly skills, likely fading to invisible and speaking easily with other specters.

While they can teach him those skills, they are less able to teach him about modern life. The graveyard denizens died over a span of centuries. Their knowledge of the world outside the graveyard is from when they were still alive. Their knowledge and speech patterns stop at the time of their death.

As Gaiman introduces us to different residents, he shares their epitaphs with us, which is a nice touch.

And so it went, until it was time for Grammar and Composition wit Miss Letitia Borrows, Spinster of this Parish (Who Did No Harm to No Man all the Dais of Her Life. Reader, Can You Say Likewise?). Bod liked Miss Borrows, and the coziness of her little crypt, and that she could all-too-easily be led off subject.

Page 106

Most of Bod’s friends are ghosts. He meets one living friend, but adults don’t easily see Bod, and they are convinced he’s imaginary. That helps keep Bod safe. He’s skeptical of some of the things the living do, too.

Scarlett shrugged. “Well,” she said. “There’s atoms, which is a things that is too small to see, that’s what we’re all made of. And there’s things that’s smaller than atoms, and that’s particle physics.”

Bod nodded and decided that Scarlett’s father was probably interested in imaginary things.

Page 43-44

One of the challenges that Bod faces is that while he grows older, his dead friends don't.  The 4, 5, and 6 year olds that live in the graveyard are 4, 5, and 6 year olds forever.  Bod isn't.  His peer group doesn't age with him. Bod is constantly growing into friendships with kids, and then growing through and beyond them.

Depsite its apparent target audience, the book doesn’t shy away from dealing with difficult or scary issues of loss. At one point, Bod is captured and taken to an underworld. At another, he discusses the issue of suicide with with Silas.

“And there are always people who find their lives have become so unsupportable they believe the best thing thy could do would be to hasten their transitions to another plane of existence.”

“They kill themselves, you mean?” said Bod. He was about eight years old, wide-eyed and inquisitive, and he was not stupid.

“Indeed.”

“Does it work? Are they happier dead?”

“Sometimes. Mostly no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you. If you see what I mean.”

Page 104

As Bod matures the topic of being who you are continues to come up.

“About fifteen, I think. Though I still feel the same as I always did,” Bod said, but Mother Slaughter interrupted, “And I still feels like I done when I was a tiny slip of a thing, making daisy chains in the old pasture. You’re always you, and that don’t change, and you’re always changing, and there’s nothing you ca do about it.”

Page 298

The book is highly episodic. It’s easy to read a chapter, put the book down, and then come back another day, without being too confused about what’s going on. The digestible chunks make it a nice choice for someone who may not want to sit down and read for hours at a time.

Gaiman still deals with darkness, violence, and life and death issues. They are themes adults may think children don’t need to be exposed to, but that children want to explore anyway. Like the Harry Potter books, The Graveyard Book appeals to all ages. The writing is clever, the characters compelling, and the pace appropriate. As the book moves to its climax, Gaiman builds up the suspense to the point where you don’t know what’s going to happen. I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's definitely worth a read.


You can find more of my book reviews here.

Book Review 53: Darkness Calls

Trouble follows us, she said. No way to stop it, baby. You just  deal with the hand, and play the cards, good and bad.

Don't be afraid of mistakes. You'll make them.

Don't be afraid of yourself. Because you will be, sometimes.

Just have a little faith. Game isn't over until you're dead.

Page 150

Survival, though, was a daily process. One more day was all a person needed. Get enough of those, and you might have a lifetime.

Page 196

I’ve either been picking the wrong books or have been excessively cranky lately because I’ve been a little disappointed with most of the books I’ve read the past few months, and Darkness Calls by Marjorie Liu is no exception.
I really enjoyed Liu’s first book in the series, and this one has some great moments, but the story seems to bog down. It’s too bad, because I wanted to like it more.  I enjoy her blog and it’s worth following her on Twitter. And I loved The Iron Hunt.
If you like The Iron Hunt, you should probably still read Darkness Calls.  If you haven’t read The Iron Hunt, there’s not much point to reading Darkness Calls.
The series follows the adventures of Maxine Kiss and her 5 demonic tattoos.  During the day, they live on her skin and make her invulnerable. Once the sunsets, the slide off and fight zombies and demons with Maxine.  And they eat random junk while singing pop songs. 

I grabbed his arm, and shoved him hard against the wall. He was strong. He resisted. But I was tougher than most men. I had to be, in order to bear the weight of the boys on my body—my boys who weighed the same, whether tattoo or flesh. Like Superman, surpassing earth's weak gravity. Fly, man, fly.

Page 115

Grant, Maxine’s Significant Other, can read auras and manipulate minds and emotions with his voice and flute.  Maxine asked him what he sees when he looks at “the boys.”

"A black rainbow," Grant replied, his fingers tightening.  "Curving streaks of scales shaded with the deepest purple and obsidian flickering with shooting stars. I see night when they sing. I see the Aurora Borealis, but without color, as though their voices come from a place too ancient to have known anything but darkness."

"And yet, you trust them."

"There's nothing wrong with an absence of light. It's just another way of being. A different kind of energy."

page 130

Maxine’s power is hereditary – passed from mother to daughter.  And the daughter comers into her own once the mother dies.  The demon tattoos leave the mother for the daughter.

Jack gave me a serious look. "You are the descendent of women who shook the world, my dear, and who entered the blood of human dreams. Wherever there are dark goddesses, and warrior queens, you will find yourself."   

Page 253

"You needed clothes," I said tersely. "I don't feel the cold.""Thanks," she replied absently, rubbing her forehead. "I can hear your skin humming."

"It does that."

Page 273

Maxine’s ordinary battles have her fighting demons that possess people and do terrible things with their bodies.  But the possessed aren’t always innocent victims.

I knelt by Archie and checked his pulse. Strong, steady. His eyelids fluttered, but he stayed unconscious, and I backed away quickly, rubbing my sweaty palms on my jeans. I had no way of knowing what this man had been like before being possessed, though I guessed he hadn't been the happy type. Stable, mentally robust people did not get possessed by demons. Too much work. No cracks to exploit.

page 5

I reminds me of the Christian tradition of demonic possession. Theoretically, the devil cannot just possess anyone.  The devil must be let in somehow.
There are some great things in this book.  Liu has some fascinating place descriptions.

Concrete walls surrounded me. I was in a narrow alley that twisted like a crooked hair, and it was as lived-in as any old shoe. Battered doors lined the walls, framed by buckets and locked bicycles, and small wooden tables covered in newspapers. I saw windows cut in the stone, protected by iron bars, and cheap lights flickered shadows from within. I listened to pots bang, and smelled grease and rotting garbage, which were only slightly stronger than the I scent of ammonia. Above me, clotheslines strung across the alley were covered in sheets and underwear. Even farther beyond that, a craggy maze of tall apartment buildings filled the night sky so completely I could see only a sliver of a cloud.

Page 95-96

And, of course, the subtle Star Wars reference.

You're not alone, she said. There are others.

Page 188

All of us, together, I thought, heart still aching. Wondering what my mother would say—she, who had lived a life beyond mine, one I was learning about in fragments, and that painted a different picture of the woman I had thought I knew. I could still hear her voice in my head.

Trust yourself

You're not alone.

There are others.

Page 259

Okay, maybe it’s not a Star Wars reference exactly, but that’s what came to mind as I read those passages.
I also enjoyed the philosophical discussions about power, confidence and the general living of life while saving the world.

"I learned from my father," Grant said. "Same thing you learned from your mother, I suppose. Power is transient Power can flow from one person to another. The most powerful person in a room isn't the wealthiest or the one with the most connections. It's the person who believes the strongest, the one who has the most confidence. And, sometimes, it's the person who can make everyone else feel like less of themselves."

Page 111

My grandmother had not been much of a writer .... But as I lay sprawled in the hall and prison of Mr. King, I was reminded of a rough note written on one of the last pages; a scrawled afterthought: The result of an act is always less damning than the thought that made it.

I did not agree.

Page 207

"One heart burns out," she breathed. "Two hearts live.'

Page 204

I have two main problems with the novel.
First, Liu has a tendency to describe what her characters are thinking by talking about how they stand or the looks on the faces. It feels like an expository short cut that’s overdone. It’s as though characters could have entire conversations by just shifting their positions and expressions without having any actual telepathic power.  Perhaps it works better in a comic book where the reader has the visual keys of the art, but seems silly after a certain point in a novel.
My other major concern was the way Liu handles the exposition and background information Maxine will need to save the world.  Some time has passed since the first novel and in that time, Maxine hasn’t learned much more about the cosmology of the world and nature of the battles she is fighting.
When the action heats up, the characters around her know more about what is going on but only let it out in dribs and drabs.  I can understand Liu not wanting to spend pages pouring out the information to the reader.  That makes sense.  But the solution to that problem doesn’t make sense from a story telling perspective.  There’s no reason someone shouldn’t just sit down with Kiss and teach her this stuff.  Sure there’s a lot, but she is having to stumble over critical pieces of information that would have been really useful to know in advance.
There’s a lot to like in Darkness Calls, despite its flaws.  I like the universe.  I like Maxine and the people around her, and I want to see what happens next.  I will read the next book in the series.  Liu hooked me with the first novel.  And I also liked the dedication:

For the nomads, the rootless, and the free ...
- Dedication

I just wish I enjoyed the novel more.
You can see more of my book reviews here.
Here is the back cover synopsis:

They are the obsidian shadows of my flesh - tattoos with minds, hearts, and dreams. By day, they protect me. But when night calls to them, they leave my body, dissolving into their true form - as demons…
Nomad born and bred, demon hunter Maxine Kiss has always relied upon herself to fight the darkness that surrounds her, the predators-human, zombie, and otherwise - who threaten the earth. But one man has penetrated her lonely life: Grant, the last of his kind. With music he is able to control any living creature…including demons. And now his life is in danger.
Haunted by the past, determined to change the future, Maxine soon understands that to save Grant, she has only one choice-to lose control, and release her own powers of darkness…