Gaiman is a good storyteller. The first few chapters, those included in the sample, set up the story very nicely and I happily bought the book.
As soon as I really started reading, however, the plot deteriorated into a Steven King-esque recitation of childhood fears and nightmares of a seven-year-old boy, as the narrator reminisced about his childhood. Don’t get me wrong here. Steven King is great at this, and his books like It, The Talisman and a number of others are powerful, engaging novels of this type. But Gaiman does not seem to have the same knack.
There were monsters, shady figures of some universal underworld, vast good and evil powers that mess with our world, and a powerful family of three generations of women, the Hempstocks, basically “witches” who have made it the quest of their lives to fight the evil in the world – and in the little boy’s life. But all the weird stuff never really came together into a story that engaged me, a story that made some sense.
I kept reading, hoping there would be some substance I cared about later, but it just never happened. The story just meandered on from one gross and macabre scene to the next, without a coherent thread. I kept asking myself why I was reading this useless junk, and I kept answering myself that I believed I might be missing out on a masterpiece.
The masterpiece never came. When I was finally done with the book, I realized that I would quickly forget all about it. There was absolutely nothing worthwhile for me here. This read like it was written by a junior high school student as a “far out” project.
Just pointless telling of a story I could not relate to in any way. A complete waste of time.
Rating: zero