Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book is the january selection for Mithlond.  In a surprising turn of events, i’ve actually managed to read it — the whole thing! — before the meeting!I really enjoyed The Graveyard Book.  It was pretty smoothly plotted and paced from beginning to end.  It moved so well that i was able to start it when we got home at 6pm and i was just finishing it up around 10:30.

I think i keep stopping short of saying i loved it because it was missing some sort of spark to elevate it above “this was perfectly well written, the story and resolution were perfectly adequate, and the characters were all very interesting and played their parts well.”  It was still good, and i did like it very much.  But i think part of my problem was that it kept bringing to mind Peter Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place, which is probably the much better book — tho’ that is absolutely not a fair comparison, because Gaiman was writing a young adult story and Beagle certainly wasn’t.

That’s an interesting thing, tho’:  Some part of me kept wanting The Graveyard Book to hit some awesome point that would elevate it to “this is a really good book and i love it,” and when it didn’t i’d excuse it by saying, “Oh, well, but it is only a young adult story.”  And that’s not fair to all of the really awesome young adult books out there.  It’s not the young adult genre’s fault that The Graveyard Book is missing that spark that will make me love it — i think it’s Gaiman’s.  I’ve read much by Gaiman and really enjoyed all of it, but overall i’d have to say that, for me, all of his stuff (that i can think of off the top of my head) is missing that spark.  Gaiman is a perfectly excellent writer and his stories are all perfectly adequate and his characters are all interesting.  And that’s where, for me, it stops.  Which is downright maddening.  He comes so very, very close to being one of those awesome writers i love (e.g., Michael Chabon), and yet there’s just one little thing missing.  I don’t know exactly what it is, but i am constantly driven to distraction by looking for it in every Gaiman thing i read.