I don't read very many novels but since there were a few lying around the house, I started in on American Gods and was ready for The Graveyard Book when it appeared on the shelves.

The thing I most enjoyed about these is the way he switches into different storytelling depending on his subjects and the epoch in which they're set.

I probably like The Graveyard Book more, because it is a perfectly subversive children's tale. It has the dark moments - very dark, as you'd expect - and it has the dilemmas of the most gripping fiction. But it has also the ring of truth; seemingly the more the confabulation the easier the 'uh-huh' moment.

When I studied fantasy writing that seemed to be the message: many novices think fantasy means a license to make shit up, but you have to have a well realized alternative reality or world for your characters to dwell in, and their experiences must still carry resonance for the reader. Don't let the preponderance of woodland sprites fool you.

I haven't had a fantasy concept strong enough to make me want to write it, but I do like to come across thoughtful ones that reshape, if for the time it takes to read it, your perception. Some of the stories in the Black Waters anthology stick with me. Unlike science fiction, you don't need to know how a crude pill can make you understand the thoughts of the zoo animals but, really, who cares? It makes for a powerful story.

I don't mean to restrict Gaiman to a single genre. If he truly is one of the ten great post modern writers, then nothing so restrictively broad as fantasy could hold him for long.

I found his biographical/historiographical interludes in the Sandman to be reasonably scholarly. His creative writing is much more playful than the dry academic writers, with whom he shares a theoretical affinity.

I've seen other writers get the violence, or appreciate the dialogue, or find a spot for their own meaningful expositions up the top of the panel. But I've rarely seen writers who can so wilfully deconstruct without becoming insufferable, or justify the conceit of populating their tales with historical personages so thoroughly, or be so prolific while rarely producing crap.

But I hype. And he doesn't need more of that from readers.

Suffice it to say that I could see the verities of the episodic stories (this could recall the minstrels, but I'm thinking Chaucer) that appear often in thin disguise in American Gods, but vanish in The Graveyard Book.
I liked the way he pulled all this back for a younger audience - without once pandering to their being kept up half the night.

I tried picturing how I would have responded to reading this if I was fifteen. Younger.

I would have probably loved it, but also been a bit freaked out.

I haven't said a thing about the plot for either book. I wouldn't want to spoil things.