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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

Better than Neil Gaiman

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01:55 / 05.05.06

First, let's set a few boundaries: this is not a thread about why Neil Gaiman is a good writer or why he is not.

I have enjoyed most of what I've read from Neil Gaiman (a good chunk of Sandman along with American Gods). I like his themes and the way he writes about them.

However, I have noticed that some people on Barbelith dislike him. Yet, through all the discussions I've read on this moderately volatile Barbe-topic, I never read what I would have liked to hear form Gaiman's critics and detractors - recommendations of books and authors who deal with themes much similar to Gaiman's work but who manage to do so in a much better way (which is personal opinion, of course).

So if you don't like Neil Gaiman because you simply can't stand what he writes about, this thread is not for you. However, if you like the themes Gaiman deals with but hate how he does so, then I'd definitely like to read about which books you think deals with similar stuff in a much better way. Something along the lines of "if you think Gaiman is good, wait until you read this".

Basically, I'm just on the lookout for great reads, I guess... ^_^

If you like Gaiman and know other great writers in the same vein, definitely feel free to post in here too!

Regrettable Juvenilia

08:14 / 05.05.06

You know how quite a few China Mieville novels have a Neil Gaiman quotation endorsing them stuck somewhere on the front or back or inside cover?

All those endorsements translate as "Like me, but great!" or "He writes so I don't have to."

10:18 / 05.05.06

China Mieville is at least 15x as good as Gaiman.

ONLY NICE THINGS

11:18 / 05.05.06

Actually, could we start by identifying what exactly you think Neil Gaiman's themes _are_? Also, are we distinguishing between themes and style?

11:31 / 05.05.06

Yeah I think this thread is preceeding from a false, or at least unclear, asumption that there are some overtly agreed upon recurring themes in his work...

11:40 / 05.05.06

And yes, I'm not sure what your benchmark for a great read is couched in ther terms of being like 'Neil Gaiman'.

It kind of reminds me of a promotional sticker placed on paperback copies of Gaiman's American Gods which claimed something along the lines that the book was "As good as Stephen King, or your money back"... What is 'as good as Stephen King'? I can see that phrase being used as much to damn the work of either or both authors as much to praise them...

In addition to this, the sticker also had a little caveat that the offer was only good for a set period of time, at which point presumably it became worse than Stephen King...

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:23 / 05.05.06

Be fair, Sleaze - QP was not saying that Neil Gaiman was the benchmark of quality. Eir train of thought, as far as I follow it, was:

1) I like both the themes Neil Gaiman writes about and the way he writes about them.

2) Others do not like Neil Gaiman's writing, either because of the themes or the way they are written about, or both.

3) Those who do not like Neil Gaiman's style of writing, but do like the writing of other people addressing the same themes, might therefore be able to provide the names of other authors addressing the same themes in what they feel is a better prose style.

However, I'm having some trouble pinning down what is sectionable off as thematic in his work. For example, is "non-normative sexuality" a Neil Gaiman theme, or is "clunky and inept treatment of non-normative sexuality" a theme? If the former, then we have an awful lot to choose from. If the latter, then critique of style gets caught up in critique of theme.

So, that's why I'm wondering what is meant by themes here. At the top level, you might say his themes are love, death, the passing of time, immortality, divinity.. big stuff. Or do we mean "gods who are somehow rendered less than divine, albeit more than human" or "deities who encapsulate the constituent elements of life" or "people in long flappy coats"...

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:37 / 05.05.06

Having said which, another one for China Mieville. His books, set mainly in or around a futuristic city which is quite a bit like London, featuring a number of strange races - NOT LEAST HUMANS WAH HAH HAH - coexisting uneasily, address issues which might well be of interest - identity and sexuality, the role of magic in a technologically advanced society, that kind of thing. On the other hand, Mieville is also a very engaged writer, with a political commitment that I tend not to see in Gaiman's work.

More directly, Gaiman's Anansi Boys appeared to have a very similar plot to Mieville's earlier King Rat, but King Rat is not a classic itself.

How about Neil Stephenson? Anyone?

Elijah, Freelance Rabbi

16:16 / 05.05.06

I have not read any of the more recent Stephenson books, because they are big enough t be boat anchors so carrying them around is difficult, so I couldn't say anything about the Baroque cycle. Cryptonomicon and Snow Crash, however, don't seem to be thematically Gaimen-like.

I think it definately depends on what part of Gaimen's work you enjoy. The light hearted fantasy aspect is one side, and if thats your taste Terry Pratchett might be a fun read (or the older Xanth books even). If the more oddball Mirrormask young-people-coming-into-their-own Gaimen is your taste, then Will Shetterly's Borderlands books are pretty good.

I think as far as theme and style go then the Lucifer ongoing comic book series is greatl, and better then some of Gaimen's work imho.

00:28 / 06.05.06

Themes I enjoy about Gaiman... Paradigm clashes, fantasy and magic being present in the modern day if you look hard enough, fairy tales with dark undertones (ok, not a theme, but you get the drift). I like Gaiman's quirky/witty characters too, most of the time. Queer stuff obviously is a bonus, but I never saw that as one of Gaiman's main themes - he's friendly about it, if a bit clumsy, but I'm alright with it.

China Miéville looks interesting; Neal Stephenson seems to be less my cup of tea. Thanks for the suggestions! (but keep going

)

The Timaximus, The!

05:00 / 06.05.06

What about Angela Carter? I haven't read her novels yet, but in her short stories she does the whole fairy tale thing, but with more experimental-type wonkiness (not that she goes into Acker or Burroughs territory, though). Gaiman's Snow Glass Apples and the werewolf issue of Sandman are pretty much Angela Carter stories, but not as good. I say this as if not a Gaiman fan, at least a Sandman fan.

All Acting Regiment

14:05 / 06.05.06

If you like magic ---> now, I'd suggest Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master & Margarita. Devils and so forth in early modern Russia- and there's even a huge cat with a tommy gun.

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:33 / 06.05.06

Paradigm clashes

Explain, please - you mean clashes between different views of the world?

18:25 / 08.05.06

QP, I think you would probably like Kelly Link. She writes some amazing short stories that weave together fantasy elements with contemporary realism in a way that reminds of Gaiman at his best.

Her first collection is called "Stranger Things Happen." She a new collection about to come out called "Magic for Beginners."

Ghost stories, folk tales, zombies, ufos... there's really no element of the fantastic she won't touch. One of my favorites of hers is about an intrepid girl detective journeying to the Underworld (as in land of the dead) to solve a mystery involving tap dancing bank robbers.

Here's links to a few of her stories:

Magic for Beginners
The Faery Handbag
The Specialist's Hat

I wish I could find a link to "Catskin" which appeared in issue 10 of Mcsweeney's. That one is soooo good.

nyarlathotep's shoe horn

06:31 / 09.05.06

Steven Erikson's "Malazan Books of the Fallen"

gods and mortals, a big complex, interconnected world in which every character has a motivation, and an intricate personal history...

as opposed to just being a big ball of evil.

it rewrites our own mythology in a way that does them more justice than our religions have.

and Terry Pratchett.
and Alan Moore.
and Ursula Leguin.
and Michael Moorcock (Ok, so he's not all that great a writer)...

ta

07:27 / 09.05.06

and Michael Moorcock (Ok, so he's not all that great a writer)...

His earlier fantasy can be a bit trashy and throwawy but his more recent novel Mother London is a fantastic bit of wrting.

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:39 / 09.05.06

I'd question very strongly whether Terry Pratchett is better than Neil Gaiman in any meaningful sense... there's certainly a stylistic correspondence, but I think I'd advise against for the same reason I'd advise against Clive Barker.

It might be worth looking at some of the authors Gaiman appears indebted to. The obvious one here is Diana Wynne Jones, who writes children's fiction, but very good children's fiction. Salman Rushdie writes magical realist fiction, but you'd have to go elsewhere for recommendations. Angela Carter, as mentioned, as almost the archetypal litgoth - maybe "The Bloody Chamber", a collection of retold fairy stories, might be worth looking at. I think you might like Kathy Acker, who I suspect was one of the influences on the whole Delirium bit. A second for Bulgakov - the Master and Margarita is great fun. Flann o'Brien, obviously - try The Third Policeman or At Swin-two-birds...

12:24 / 09.05.06

Has anybody mentioned Philip Pullman?

12:57 / 09.05.06

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town* reminded me a bit of [the things I enjoy about] Gaiman. A broadstroke summary of the novel and the characters would probably sound unbearably quirky/whimsical**, but it actually plays out as a reasonably tense and "serious" story - a good balance.

I think I'm going to be following up some of the other recommendations in this thread, myself. Thanks!

*link to free download page

**there's a girl with wings, a man whose father is (literally) a mountain, and whose mother is (again, literally) a household appliance, and a whole lot of stuff about wireless networks. "Better than it sounds" applies.

A fall of geckos

17:40 / 09.05.06

I think Lud in The Mist by Hope Mirrlees is a heavy influence on Stardust and to a lesser extent Jonathan Strange. Some information on Mirrlees can be found here.

The similarities between the books are mostly in terms of tone and landscape. Lud is a more staid and mercantile version of the Stardust town of Wall, but is dominated by fairyland in much the same way - though in Lud-in-the-Mist fairyland is perceived as somehow threatening and even perverse. All three books draw to some extent on the English mythic landscape, though this is less evident in Stardust. Although Lud-in-the-Mist is ostensibly set in Dorimere there are aspects of local folklaw present from all across the UK. Likewise Jonathan Strange, which I've noticed has footnotes that read almost exactly like entries in Katharine Briggs' Dictionary of British Folktales.

Lud in The Mist's an odd book which manages to successfully combine the comedy of manners, the detective story, the ghost story and the fairy tale. It's central concern is the difference between - and the reconciliation of - the prosaic and the fantastic. It has a very definite though subtle feeling of the weird, odd and magical. If you're looking for an alternative to Gaiman I would definitely recommend reading it.

A good alternative to Neverwhere would be The Borrible Trilogy. The Borribles books are kids novels - well written (the first is a little shaky in places but they improve as they progress) and genuinely subversive.

I've ranted a bit more about these books here, but they're pretty good in terms of urban fantasy. By the way, does anyone else feel that they should love the urban fantasy sub-genre, but most of the actual urban fantasy books aren't that great? If anyone knows of any good one's I'd be interested to hear about them.

Tryphena Absent

19:56 / 09.05.06

Paradigm clashes, fantasy and magic being present in the modern day if you look hard enough, fairy tales with dark undertones (ok, not a theme, but you get the drift). I like Gaiman's quirky/witty characters too, most of the time

There's an urban fantasy novel by a friend of Gaiman's called Emma Bull. War for the Oaks. I quite liked it when I was a 16 year old fantasy junkie but that means it could be rubbish. There are reviews on Amazon that will give you a breakdown of the plot. A lot of it has been stolen by other writers (it was published in 1987) but I think it probably fulfills a few of the criteria above.

13:33 / 10.05.06

I second the Borribles recommendation! I come back to the trilogy every few years, and it hasn't dulled. The "fantasy-ish" elements of the series are less obvious than a lot of urban fantasy - no overt magic, no disguised Faerie Princes or dragon crime-bosses. It's more in the background, in the basic propositions the reader is expected to accept (i.e. the existence of tribes of immortal, feral street-kids with pointed ears, and the snooty, rodentlike Rumbles). Good good good stuff.

Tryphena Absent

15:10 / 10.05.06

War for the Oaks has a faerie Prince!!!! And some Queens. It has everything.

Keith, like a scientist

15:26 / 10.05.06

I would like to put Jonathan Carroll up as a recommendation here. I think that he would fit the criteria nicely.

Perhaps, obvious, but also Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell should get a mention here.

And, definitely check out , who I've just discovered criminally does not have a Barbe-topic. I'm thinking particularly of Satanic Verses, Moor's Last Sigh, and especially Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

20:44 / 10.05.06

Paradigm clashes

Explain, please - you mean clashes between different views of the world?

Exactly - fundamental world views and belief systems.

* * *

I'll have to look further into all of these recommendations, although I've looked up the Borrible Trilogy on Wikipedia and it really feels like it is my kind of thing.

I also grabbed a copy of China Miéville's Perdido Street Station while I was in Vermont, but I have yet to start reading it.

Once again, thanks for the suggestions!

22:38 / 31.05.06

Themes I enjoy about Gaiman... Paradigm clashes, fantasy and magic being present in the modern day if you look hard enough, fairy tales with dark undertones (ok, not a theme, but you get the drift). I like Gaiman's quirky/witty characters too, most of the time. Queer stuff obviously is a bonus, but I never saw that as one of Gaiman's main themes - he's friendly about it, if a bit clumsy, but I'm alright with it.

For the first couple of themes, read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Garcia Marquez (if I may plug him twice in the same night...). It's rich, reference-heavy, very atmospheric. Gaiman does seem very light after reading this, in fact no, I'll stop there. You can't compare the two.. It's like comparing the back of a cereal box with the back cover of The Bhaghavad Gita. (I'm a big Gaiman fan, they're just different)

17:11 / 01.06.06

Paradigm clashes, fantasy and magic being present in the modern day if you look hard enough, fairy tales with dark undertones

Little Big.

Little Big.

LITTLE BIG!

LITTLE BIG!

Or,
Little Big.

Click, click!

03:50 / 07.06.06

I like Gaiman's work, although ANANSI BOYS felt a tad slight to me after AMERICAN GODS.

US writer Jeffrey Ford may not overlap NG but perhaps lives in a neighboring county. His short stories are cool and THE PORTAIT OF MRS CHARBUQUE is effing amazing for the most part. It's about a Victorian portraitist who accepts a commission to paint a woman who hides behind a screen. She tells him her life's story, which is mad and strange, and he has to paint the portrait based on these impressions alone.

Liz Williams is also damned cool, although her prose resembles Angela Carter more than Gaiman. THE BANQUET OF THE LORDS OF NIGHT is impressive and her DETECTIVE INSPECTOR CHEN novel (SNAKE AGENT) starts like gangbusters (quiet gangbusters).

03:53 / 07.06.06

And I'm finally going to finish LITTLE, BIG this summer. The first seventy odd pages were lovely. There's a special 25th Anniversay edition coming out with some staggeringly cool illos from artist Peter Milton. The art already exists and is meant to evoke the book from an oblique angle.

www.littlebig25.com

20:09 / 07.06.06

It's a bit closer to China Meiville's stuff than it is to Gaiman's, but I'd highly endorse Jeff Noon's Vurt to anyone interested in warped reflections of our world. I'm not sure how much I can say without giving some of the fun away... It's about a group of friends and users of Vurt, a reality bending drug that comes in the form of a feather, and what a person must do when a lover becomes literally lost to the drug.

Mysterious Transfer Student

05:46 / 08.06.06

Sorry to drop into the thread like this, but I couldn't find a better place to recommend Living Next-Door to the God of Love by Justina Robson. A bald plot summary might sound horrendously twee (self-harming teenage misery queen decamps to alien fantasy world entered via Blackpool and shacks up with mercurial, androgynous dark prince who gives great head) but it's both deeper and nastier than you might give it credit for. The setting, which at first seems to be a standard logically elastic, make-up-a-new-rule-when-the-plot-falters fantasy realm, is well worked out and the secondary characters in particular (a burned-out physics tutor, a winged female police officer) are enjoyable. Robson is taking a much lighter turn with her newest novel, Keeping it Real, but if you can tolerate some slightly overdone personal/cosmic angst, this one is worth it.

14:54 / 08.06.06

Another vote for Jonathan Strange (Susanna Clarke) and the Earthsea Trilogy (Ursula K. LeGuin).

Michael Moorcock's Champion Eternal megaseries obviously left a deep impression on Gaiman, so you might like that as well. (Start with the Elric or Corum books.)

And then there's Gene Wolfe. Head and shoulders above anyone I can name, or anyone can name, with the possible exceptions of Marquez and Borges. The deepest, richest, most profund science fiction/fantasy you'll ever read, with lots of meditations on life, death, religion, sex, time, immortality, and much more.

But he's a VERY challenging read -- there are plenty of things that only become clear the second time through, or the twelfth. (Start with Shadow of the Torturer.)

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:02 / 08.06.06

Vurt is beautiful. We should probably have a Noon thread. If nobody's done it in the next few days and there isn't one already, I'll kick one off.

If you want "magical-realist" SF, you could also do worse than Samuel R Delany's Dhalgren (possibly the greatest novel ever written- it'll take me another couple of reads to come to a conclusion on that one).

21:07 / 15.06.06

If you liked Anansi Boys: try P.G Wodehouse.

Or for modern magic and wierdness Tim Powers is great. Declare, is brilliant. Cold war spy thriller with Djinn chucked in.

02:13 / 02.07.06

Wolfe. Yes. WOW. The New Sun books are astonishing.

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