The Ocean at the End of the Lane

Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers, so when I was given the opportunity to get a review copy of The Ocean at the End of the Lane,I jumped at the chance. This book is awesome. In fact, I think it might be my new favorite Gaiman novel.

This is a story that manages to be both creepy and magical. It's about a young boy who discovers that one his parents' lodgers has committed suicide in the family car. This leads to a strange series of events involving the decidedly peculiar Hempstock family, a strange otherworldly being that tries to give people what they want, and some really nasty varmints.

I don't want to go into any specific details, because I want to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible. This book was very disturbing, especially some of the scenes between the young protagonist and his father. The villain was scary. The Hempstocks were wonderful.

This is a book that you shouldn't miss.

Greenbeard

While it sounds like an interesting book, I found Richard James Bentley's  Greenbeard to be disappointing. I blame this on the book's description, which makes it sound weirder and funnier than it actually is.  Don't get me wrong, it's not bad; it's just not as good as I was expecting.

The titular Greenbeard, aka Sylvestere de Greybagges, is a lawyer turned pirate captain who used to have a normal bear until he was enslaved by an alien being who gave him a green beard so he could serve it better. Being a pirate, he naturally managed to escape and vowed revenge. Most of the book deals with him turning his pirate ship into a space ship, and only the final few pages deal with his actual battle against alien forces.

He has plenty of adventures along the way. He manages to rescue a "Frank Banjamin" from Barbary pirates who had enslaved him, and as you might guess, Mr. Benjamin seems to be Ben Franklin with his name changed for no apparent reason since other historical figures appear with their real names. He also meets Solomon Kane, whose name is changed Solomon Pole, even including a parody of "Solomon Kane's Homecoming," despite the fact that Robert E. Howard wouldn't have written it for more than a century after this book's time period. The book does involve time travel, though, so I suppose that might explain this particular anachronism, though I personally found it annoying.

I also found the Lovecraftian name dropping annoying. The alien who kidnapped Greenbeard is apparently one of the Great Old Ones, and Cthulhu is mentioned--as is Mrs. Cthulhu and their daughter Lulu Cthulhu--but these seem to be Great Old Ones and Cthulhu in name only. They lack any of the cosmic terror of Lovecraft, and are just kind of lame.

Obviously the Mrs. Cthulhu and Lulu Cthulhu are intended to be humorous, but it just kind of falls flat. In fact much of the book seems to be intended to be witty, with references to philosophy, and many bad puns. At times it almost felt like I's wandered into a Xanth novel.

This just really isn't for me. It's not weird enough for weird fiction. It's no where near funny enough for humorous fiction. The plot is a bit too slow for action fiction. Even the science fiction aspects are kind of lame.

Shatnerquest

It's been nearly a year since I reviewed Jeff Burk's Shatnerquake, and since he has a sequel out, it's time to review it. Shatnerquest isn't really a sequel in the sense that it continues the story of the previous book, and William Shatner isn't the main character in this as he was in Shatnerquake. This is a very odd sort of sequel that could almost not be a sequel if it wasn't for some passing references to the previous book in one of the scenes that Shatner appears in.

This book starts out at a Magic: The Gathering tournament at a media convention in Pennsylvania. Just as one of our heroes is about to lay some card-based smack down on a really obnoxious Klingon, the world ends. Giant flaming boulders rain down from the sky, and our three heroes and their cat are seemingly the only survivors. The heroes head home, only to discover that their hometown is being destroyed by Godzilla, the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, and various other giant monsters. With nothing better to do, they head across country to save William Shatner.

Along the way, the have some weird adventures. Their obnoxious Klingon enemy returns as the head of a Klingon white supremacist biker gang. They meet a cult of cannibalistic James Kirk worshipers. There are zombie Borg, a gas station-attendant Dalek, and a steampunk town. Also, as anyone who has seen the book's cover can guess, Shatner has grown to gigantic size and become Shatzilla.

This was a really fun and funny bizarro romp. I liked it even more than the first one. I just hope that Jeff Burk realizes that no one takes duologies seriously, so he must now write a third Shatner book to make it a trilogy.