I picked this up at a friend named Lance's suggestion, looking for something new now that I've read almost everything Dashiell Hammett has written. Yes, I realize this has been out since 2001, but I read "Neverwhere" a while back, and I was really disappointed.
Not so with this one.
Damn, this one's good. Not sure if I'm going to sit through "Anansi Boys," but this one has really got me going through the old college library. In fact, I think I'm going to go pick up a copy of "Hero with a Thousand Faces" post haste. This book had me pulling out Hamilton's "Mythology" and the encyclopedic set of "Man, Myth, and Magic," and I'm not entirely sure I kept up with all of the references.
Let me put it this way: I've been making obscure references to Norse mythos for the last three days now. In fact, I really geeked out when a young girl on exchange from Germany named Freya enrolled in one of my classes. Sure, it's not as cool as the year I had an Ulisses, a Nestor, and a Molly all in one class, but how often does one have the fairest of the Vanir attending one's every word?
Anyway, I'm moving on to the new William Gibson novel. Here's hoping it's not another "Pattern Recognition."
2 comments:
Err, yeah, Chet and I discussing it this morning suggests you're pretty screwed on the Gibson book.
I actually thought Pattern Recognition was his best book in a while, so I'm looking forward to Spook Country.
As far as Gaiman goes, Neverwhere was, indeed mediocre. American Gods (I should have gotten him to sign you a copy, too---for some reason I always get stuff signed for Chet) is really fun. Anansi Boys is good, but not great, IMHO. But I haven't read it but once, and often his novels have to grow on me.
If you like American Gods, though, you need to seek out his short story The Monarch Of The Glen, which features Shadow. It's in the latest collection, Fragile Things which I would recommend as a whole.
Screwed as in I got the review wrong or screwed as in I'm going to hate Spook Country? In Pattern Recognition's defense, I have put SC aside to try a reread of the former. Two things are making this difficult for me:
1. Cayce/Case's name. Is there some kind of award that he and Q. Tarantino are vying for that has to do with the number of characters sharing the same name?
2. Cayce's job. If there really is some kind of job out there like hers, then truly life as we know it should be snuffed out.
Again, I'm rereading it. Maybe a second read will mellow my opinion.
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