The King of Neverwhere. (Neil Gaiman in general)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	Neil Gaiman in general
Date:	06/06/02 (34 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a wide range of excellent material

Disadvantages: if you don't want to beleive in faeries, it won't work for you.

Neil Gaiman is a very strange man, no two ways about it. Either he will confuse you or you will end up consiering him to be at least a minor deity of strange fiction. He's not the sort of author who puts his private life much on display, he's a quiet soul, so I can't offer you much in the way of biography. The key things are that he is British, and at time of writing this, very much alive and with us (long may it continue so.)

Gaiman is probably best known for his work on the Sandman series - a collection of graphic novels noted for their sophistication of art work and story line, they deal with mythological figures, gods, demons and dreams. Morpheus, Lord of Dreams is the central figure on these books. However, Gaiman has a few other interesting projects to his name - the TV series "Neverwhere" which was a forray into the world of London below, where there actually is an Angel Islington - he's since produced a book version of this. Then there's his collaboration with Terry Pratchett for "Good Omens." More recently, Gaiman has produced a colleciton of short stories "Smoke and Mirrors" and a novel "American Gods." There's other stuff as well - he crops up all over the place. These are probably the most important pieces though.

In terms of writing style, Gaiman is hard to define. There is a great deal of humour in his work, some of it rather dark, he has a capacity for horror that leaves me in mind of Clive Barker and a capacity for the downright weird that is all his own. There's a lot of magical realism in Gaiman's work - he will present the most unlikely things as solid truth and expect them to be digested as such. I know of no one else who could describe seeing the devil approaching his house one night and make you beleive it was possible and not at all b-movie ish.

What fascinates me most about Gaiman is his extensive background in folklore and mythology. Much of hi
s work seems vaguly familiar - one of its main attractions, and he draws very widely indeed. I've seen smatterings of British folklore, Greek myths, Roman myths, Viking myths, Egyptian myths, Christain myths - and I expect there are a good deal more if you know where to find them. He draws on faerie tale images and plays with them, plays with the readers expectations and often sends you off in entirely unexpected directions. The above is the reason for re-occuring characters and figures and for the eerie sense of the familiar - you may not be able to pin down where you've run into it before. That said, Gaiman is not a mere plagarist of older works, he brings something very fresh and new to the tales he re-examins, and does often create some totally original stuff (at least I think he does, its hard to tell.)

Gaiman is not going to suit everyone - you have to suspend your dibelief andaccept the versions of reality that he offers, full of fairies, magic old gods and hidden dangers. if you can enter that sort of reality, if you do like the diea of fairy tales for grown ups, then he's well worth giving a go. if you enjoy Clive barker at his more weird and elss gross, then Gaiman is going to agree with you no end.

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