There was a hand in the darkness, and it held a knife...

So begins Neil Gaiman's masterfully written, The Graveyard Book

    And with those words the reader is thrust into a unique world and adventure.  One can automatically infer that from just that opening sentence, they are about to embark on a bourney (book journey) of intrigue, excitement, and danger.  I am a huge Gaiman fan and this is the 5th book by him that I've read.  Neverwhere, American Gods, Smoke & Mirrors, and Stardust being the previous four respectively.  He is now the 2nd most author I've read, Stephen King being the 1st.  Gaiman has a way of weaving a beautiful story full of imagination beyond comprehension.  He doesn't fall into the formulaic plot that most author's of this genre do.  He creates new creatures as well as reimagining old ones.  He spins a story so enthralling the reader can't help but become immersed in it.  I have not been disappointed with any of the books I've read by him, though there were a few stories in Smoke & Mirrors that were just OK, but overall the book was great.

TGB Synopsis: "In this ingenious and captivating reimagining of Rudyrad Kipling's classic adventure The Jungle Book, Neil Gaiman tells the unforgettable story of Nobody Owens, a living, breathing boy whose home is a graveyard, raised by a guardian who belongs neither to the mortal world nor the realm of the dead.  Among the mausoleums and headstones of his home, Bod experiences things most mortals can barely imagine.  But real, flesh-and-blood danger waits just outside the cemetery walls: the man who murdered the infant Bod's family will not rest until he finds Nobody Owens and finishes the job he began years ago."

***THERE WILL BE SOME SPOILERS***

    Having never read The Jungle Book I cannot speak to how it compared, though I do fully intend on reading Kipling's classic this year.  I can say that I thought this book was fantastic!  It was full of Gaiman's wit and creativity.  He writes with compassion and it shows in the characters he's created.  You can empathize with each character, be it love, hate, anger, sadness, joy, or astonishment.  I found myself gasping at times when imminent danger was lurking around the next page, I laughed at the moments of awkwardness between Bod and the "living", I felt compassion from the tender moments between Bod and his "ghost parents" and his living/not living guardian Silas.  I was angered and frustrated at the cruelty of the school bully's and greedy shopkeeper, and the villainous murderers.  I felt triumph with Bod's defeat of his enemies.  I felt a deep sadness when he had to say good-bye to the only living friend and girl he liked, Scarlet, and even more sadness when it was time for Bod to say good-bye to the only world and "people" he knew, the ghosts of the graveyard, his "parents" and  Silas.  I felt joy and inspiration when Bod forged forward leaving all he knew behind, with hope and determination in his heart.  I felt excitement at the endless possibilities and adventures Bod would embark on.  This was a story of "love, loss, survival, and sacrifice...and what it means to truly be alive".  I felt all those emotions and more.  As I neared the end of the book, I kept looking down at the page number, in hopes I wouldn't be close to finishing.  I hungered for more, to read more and was impatient to see how the story unfolded, but I was also reticent to continue because it meant the bourney would be over.  Such is the dilemma for the avid reader and a truly remarkable book.  It is a cycle we must endure, a torture we inflict on ourselves with both great pain and pleasure, and always a cycle we are too eager to repeat.

    I loved this book and highly rec it.  It gets my highest rating XXX.  I will leave this post with one of the best closing paragraphs I've read:

    "There was a passport in his bag, money in his pocket.  There was a smile dancing on his lips, although it was a wary smile, for the world is a bigger place than a little graveyard on a hill; and there would be dangers in it and mysteries, new friends ot make, old friends to rediscover, mistakes to be made and many paths to be walked before he would, finally, return to the graveyard or ride with the Lady on the broad back of her great grey stallion.
 But between now and then, there was Life; and Bod walked into it with his eyes and his heart wide open."

Stay Booked! Happy Reading!

The Walking Dead: Volume 1: Days Gone Bye

Excellent read!  The show followed the book pretty tightly.  Though there are like 14 books in The Walking Dead series, so the show could veer off at some point, like TB did.  I need to get the rest of the books in this series.  It's an excellent and fresh take on the Zombie story.  My zombie reading is pretty minimal so I only have World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide (both excellent) to compare TWD too, but really well done and excellent art work.  I really like in the introduction by writer Robert Kirkman he says:
"I'm not trying to scare anybody.  If that somehow happens as a result of reading this comic, that's great, but really... that's not what this book is about.  What you now hold in your hands is the most serious piece of work I've done so far in my career.  I'm the guy that created Battle Pope; I hope you guys realize what a stretch this is for me.  It's really not that hard to beliece when you realize that I'm delving into subject matter that is so utterly serious and dramatic...
Zombies.
To me the best zombie movies aren't the splatter fests of gore and violence with goofy characters and tongue in cheek antics.  Good zombies show us how messed up we are, they  make us question our station in society... and our society's station in the world.  They show us gore and violence and all that cool stuff too... but there's always an undercurrent of social commentary and thoughtfulness."
  I couldn't agree more.  Night of the Living Dead just wasn't a great scary movie, but it's undercurrent of social commentary, in this case racism, was a also fantastic.  It dealt with an extremely important issue in the United States, at a time it was not only relevant but also volatile.  This is the beauty of Sci-Fi, horror, comics, they all take a stand and bring issues to light in ways that we don't at 1st realize and in ways that are far better than "legit" drama.  These genres take relevant, seriously important and at times volatile issues and present them in clever, unique and thought provoking material.  It's why I've always been a fan of these genres since I was a kid and continue to be a fan as an adult.  I can't wait to get the books in this series and devour them like a zombie on a slow fat kid!  Highest rating XXX.  Stay Booked! Happy Reading!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

****THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THIS REVIEW****

 "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal... Except for vampires..."

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is not only a cool title, but also a cool concept.  I have not read Grahame-Smith's 'Pride and Prejudice and Zombies', which also sounds cool, but after reading this book, I will def pick it up. I know this book may seem ridiculous to most, I will admit when I 1st saw it, I was like; "Yeah I'm not reading that".  I'm glad I changed my mind.  It absolutely blew my expectations away.  It was well written and fun to read.  Grahame-Smith does a fantastic job of intertwining historical facts with fantastical fiction.  He could have taken the story and made it silly, but he didn't.  He wrote it so straight-faced that I found myself at times thinking the non-fiction parts were true!  The historical part was just fantastic.  I never realized how little I knew of our 16th president and the dramatic life he lived.  As Grahame-Smith said himself on the Acknowledgement page; "And finally, to Abe--for living a life that hardly needed vampires to make it incredible...".  Grahame-Smith wasn't joking.  Abe experienced the death of his mother at an early age; he realizes his father wasn't the great man he had once believed; Abe lost 3 sons to early deaths, his betrothed (Ann Rutledge) died before they married; his wife (Mary Todd) fell to mental instability due to the loss of their 3 sons; he started a business and it failed.  He ran for congress and lost, he battled deep depression (from his journal he wrote of suicide more than once), and so much more.  Despite all these tragedies, setbacks, trials, Lincoln forged ahead with a strength of character and tenacity not seen in these times.  He lead a country through a war that would pit countrymen vs countrymen, brother vs brother all to do the right thing, to free people from tyranny and enslavement.  He went against the majority and never wavered, never compromised his values.  Now throw in the fiction to sweeten the pot.  Abe loses his mother to a cruel creature, vampire.  Vampires have fled Europe, for they were being hunted by Europeans for centuries, to come to America and take over the "New World".  They loved America for its cruelty toward man, black slaves.  The Union is really a group of good vampires out to rid America of the bad vampires.  Grahame-Smith goes on to "document" how if the North lost the civil war, not only would blacks remain in servitude, but ALL men/women/children would be enslaved by their new masters, vampires.  I love the connections of other iconic Americans.  Abe meets Edgar Allen Poe in Louisiana, Jefferson Davis is an evil human, helping the vampire race to enslave his own race, Henry Sturges is one of the good vampires and becomes Abe's closest and most trusted friend despite Abe's overwhelming hate for vampires and of course John Wilkes Booth, famous actor, ladies man, assassin, vampire.  I found myself hoping for something to intervene with Booth's cowardly deed, that somehow the assassination doesn't take place, but of course as we all know our history and it does indeed happen.  The only thing I will say didn't ring true, was the end.  I knew what the end was going to be, or rather I suspected what the end would be.  Throughout the book every time Abe lost a loved one, Henry Sturges offered to bring them back by turning them vampire, to which Lincoln always declined, so from that foreshadowing one could infer that Abe is coming back as a vampire.  What doesn't ring true is that throughout this entire book the reader is privy to Abe's extreme hate for the vampire race, so would he really come back as one?  I'm nitpicking of course, but I would be remiss not to mention it.  Overall an excellent read and I encourage everyone to read it.  It won't disappoint you, unless you are a vampire sympathizer, then you may not like it. :)   I rate it **** out of 4.  Stay Booked! Happy Reading!