Goodreads Review: the Books of Magic

Posted by Phoebe

The Books of Magic The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My wonderful husband bought me all of the many volumes of this series for Valentines Day–with a note inside that said that the best things about my writing remind him of The Books of Magic.

Aw.

He did warn me, though, that this first volume is closer to standard Gaiman fare than the rest of the series–where Tim’s story transforms into the sort of YA fantasy that he knows I love.

He was right–which isn’t to say that I didn’t enjoy this first volume regardless. Tim Hunter’s first excursion through time and space was well-written and lovingly illustrated. Although I have little familiarity with the DC canon, characters like John Constantine and Doctor Occult still seemed likable, or at the very least intriguing. And the section most redolent of Gaiman’s later work–for me, Tim’s foray into Faerie–taps the same deep sense of myth and awe that he later exploits to haunting effect in Stardust.

But Tim himself remains an enigma. We know nothing of him–not his personality or background–from the outset, and even by the volume’s conclusion are left mostly in the dark. This was problematic for me, and I think it may have been what my husband was talking about when he said this Book of Magic was not YA.

I’ve been thinking lately, thanks to some comments by teen writer Steph Bowe on Catcher in the Rye, about what makes a given work YA. I’ve come to believe that a work needs to have two things in order for the YA label to really fit comfortably: first, the author needs to intentionally be writing for an adolescent audience, taking the entertainment and educational needs into account (or at least consideration) during the process of drafting a work. Secondly, the author needs to create a protagonist with which the reader can identify. This is sometimes done by drafting a blank-slate or Everyman teen character (think: Bella from Twilight or Harry Potter), which is, in broad strokes, what Gaiman was doing here. Unfortunately, Tim Hunter is, so far, so blank as to be inscrutable. There is a brief sequence near the end of the final book in this volume where we’re given a glimpse of Tim’s home life. For me, this was also the most resonant and effective sequence–and it occupied all of three pages! Concluding, rather than beginning, with Tim’s real life, was an unorthodox choice for Gaiman, and I’m not sure it was an entirely effective one–particularly if you evaluate this against other YA works, an almost inevitable comparison thanks to Tim’s surface similarities to Harry Potter.

But I’m not sure this is a fair comparison, for this volume, at least, because it’s also clear that Gaiman wasn’t writing specifically for teenagers here–he doesn’t intend the Books of Magic to be a series primarily for teenagers. It fails my YA litmus test, even if it largely succeeds on its own.

Still, I’m excited to read the rest of the series, where (I’ve read) later author John Rey Nieber made turning Tim into an identifiable and well-actualized teenager one of his primary goals.

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Permalink | Comments (0) | Mar 2, 2010

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