I review Neil Gaiman's "The Ocean at the end of the Lane" instead of paying rent.

Things I'd rather do than write another book report: die.

So mom says if I want to continue to live in the basement for free then I have to be productive.  Productivity is another book report in her mind. I read a book and now I'm going to report on it so I don't have to start paying rent to live in my mother's basement. 

At least this book was enjoyable unlike the R.L. Stine book. The story I read was "The Ocean at the end of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman.  The story, like many of Gaiman's books, has a fairy tale atmosphere around it. It's like when you open any Gaiman book a large soft blanket, fresh-out-of-the-dryer-warm wraps around you. So if you like that feeling Gaiman is your author. 

I've read many of Neil Gaiman's books. I have an indescribable respect for him. "American Gods" and "Stardust" are books I've started and finished within days. He has a way with world building and characterization that makes you forget where you are. Even when your mom is yelling at you from the top of the basement steps to clean the bathroom his world can make you ignore her for hours and hours. When an author can do that you know they're good at what they do. 

Now that I've said that I can say this. His short novel "The Ocean at the end of the Lane" is not his strongest work. I think the main reason this story struggles, for me, is because there isn't enough time for Gaiman to share. It reads rushed. Rushed like how my mom always rushes me to go outside and "get some sun." What the hell, mom? I don't need sun. I'm pale as a blank Word document and I like it that way. Love me for who I am. 

One reason it reads rushed is there isn't much explaining or delving into characters background. Now I'm all for efficiency and bare bones story telling, but the magical nature of the characters in question begs for a little more explanation.  

Another reason it seems rushed is that there are massive events that are just brushed over. Massive events such as the main character's father cheating on his mother with a shape shifting monster that looks like a hot lady. Now I'm all for stories like that, but we don't get any payoff from something like that. We don't get a father being caught or feeling remorse. There is nothing that comes back to say that a man cheating on his wife is dealt with like this or that. It just seemed to me that if you show something like that in your story it should come back to harm the family. 

Neil Gaiman is a curious author to me. At times his writing is crisp, to the point, and enjoyable. But there are times where he lapses into cliche and just plain bad writing. This sentence on page 157 made me groan aloud. "I saw bursts of light that were not there." What? I'm all for making the reader work, but this is just trying to roll a seven with a six sided dice.  This kind of obscurity is rampant throughout the novel.  The narrator sees things then doesn't see them. It's hard to understand what is real. Which might be what Gaiman was going for, but without being able to see anything there is no tension. Here's an example: "It was two people talking in unison. Or a hundred people. I could not tell" (pg. 139).   What is the reader supposed to do with this? Are there a hundred people? Sure we could get that the narrator is scared and confused, but by what? There isn't enough concrete images for me to feel tension at this point. When my mother wants me to be scared she throws all my stuff out on the street corner. I see my lamp and books and dresser sitting on the street corner and I fear that she's kicked me out. But most of the time it's just a scare tactic to keep me productive. 

This story is really a fairy tale for adults. There is magic and sex. And there is deus ex machina. Dues ex machina all over the place. So once you accept it the story is much less frustrating to read. But the fact that this is a story for adults makes me believe that the deus ex machina is insulting our intelligence. Oh, you need someplace for your protagonist to be safe? Here is a fairy ring that's TOTALLY been in your yard the whole time. What do you know? None of the monsters can break the ring! At times it reads like Gaiman wrote himself into a corner and then just stood up and yelled MAGIC at the computer screen and typed some lame deus ex machina into the story.  Maybe I should try that with mom. The next time she tells me to do something I'm going to stand up and yell MAGIC and wait for something to happen. And when it doesn't happen I'll know that I'm never going to Hogwarts and that deus ex machina is the absolute worst thing you can put into a story. 

One last thing. Since Neil Gaiman is British I don't know if this is a British thing or what, but the narration reads as if a robot wrote it. Take this example on page 47: "I do not know why I did not ask an adult about it. I do not remember asking adults about anything, except as a last resort." If you read it out loud you sound like a robot. People don't speak like that and narrators shouldn't either. I assume the narrator isn't robot. This mechanical speak isn't natural and it makes the read tough at times. There's no life to it. People speak with contractions and I think narrators should as well.  

I love the ideas in this novel. I just think it was rushed and could have used another edit or two.  If you want Neil Gaiman at his best read "American Gods" or "Stardust." They have fantastical elements like this, but are much longer books so they have more room to breathe and grow, which in turn makes them more believable.  Unlike my mom who doesn't allow me room to breath and grow by smothering me in book reports and chores to keep me productive.   Well she can kiss my butt because I'm cutting this report short because deus ex machina arrived in the form of a timer letting me know my pizza rolls are done. 

I Review R.L. Stine's Adult Horror Novel Titled "Not as Good as Goosebumps"

My mother is a hag.

I wish I could write a review that long like Faulkner wrote a chapter that long because it says all I want  to say about my mother.

If I seem angrier than usual in this post it's because that hag made me read a book by R.L. Stine recently. Of course when she handed me the book I wasn't angry. I was actually relieved that she wanted me to read something other than what her book club does.  Then I read it and now I hate her.

Nostalgia, you jerk. Coating my memories in warm and fuzzy. Lulling me into a world I remembered as exciting, new, and somewhat scary. Nostalgia urged me to read this new R.L. Stine book and I did. And it was awful.

Before we get too far I'd like to say that I owe R.L. Stine a debt. He's a big reason why I started reading. And because I read I went to college. And at college I got a degree in English. And now I live in my mother's basement.

Oh.

Thanks, Mr. Stine?

Anyway, Goosebumps, R.L. Stine's children's horror book series, was an enormous reason why I not only started reading but ENJOYED reading as a child. These books caught me and held me and yes, some of them scared me. But these were children's books. As a child reader you don't know the difference between a good one and a bad one. You can love the subject matter of the story though. The ooze monsters, creepy dolls, and sentient masks were all subject matter I was interested in as a child. No, not because I was born out of an ooze monster of a woman. I was just a kid who liked creepy things.

Goosebumps were so popular they made movies and board games out of them. They were decent children's books. And what an amazing idea choose your own adventure was. Kids gobbled that up. At least I did.

Ermahgerd. Cherse ur urn advurntur.

But now, probably 13 years after I read my last Goosebumps book, my mom hands me an R. L. Stine horror book for ADULTS called "Red Rain." Of course I read it and after a few chapters I'm thinking this could use a little more editing. But the more I read the worse it got. 

Let's start at the beginning. Chapter 1 is a blog post written by Lea Sutter who may or may not be our protagonist. This chapter and the third chapter are the only chapters in the form of a blog post in the whole novel. Why start your story with blog posts if you just leave that format behind? I thought it was a neat gimmick that might work. But it's just used twice and dropped. It's bizarre. It's like going on a first date and telling your date that you moved back home. Then in the next few dates you say "yeah I moved back home, but I live in my mom's basement." It's deceitful. Well, those were my date's words. But I could see her point. So now I start all my dates with "I moved back home" and I NEVER change the story from there. Being deceitful in life can work out sometimes, but it becomes unforgivable when you do it to your audience as an author. In my humblest of opinions. 

Speaking of never changing, I don't believe R.L. Stine changed anything about his writing when he made the jump to adult fiction. Well, except add curse words, violence, and sex. But that's subject matter not the writing itself. Stine uses the word "frightening" six times in the first chapter. So just in case you forgot this is a HORROR NOVEL. YOU NEED TO FEEL FRIGHTENED. This heavy handed approach is something that would work for a children's book because kids are dumb. They need heavy handed writing to even have a chance at understanding. Adult readers don't need to be told things are frightening. Adult readers aren't dumb. Well, my mom does read so maybe some are. But most adult readers would be insulted by the idea that they need to be told six times that this story is going to be scary. Don't tell them, Stine. Just do it. 

Another example of how R.L. Stine hasn't graduated into Adult writing: "She stumbled over something soft. A corpse! No. Clothing. A tangled pile of soaked shirts and shorts..." 

Were you scared? Did the exclamation point help?

BOO!

This attempt at shocking the reader is something that might work in a Goosebumps book.  All we have is the word "corpse!" What is the reader supposed to do with this? Imagine a dead body? A woman's body or a man's? A child? A dog? Oh wait never mind it's just clothes.  R.L. Stine is nudging the reader in the ribs and saying "Gotcha!" When it most obviously isn't a "gotcha" moment. It's a moment of unclear exposition and untrustworthy narration. 

Pet-peeve Alert: R.L. Stine uses two words where one will do twice as much work. He does this quite a few times in this story. Example: "people talked quietly, but the..." What is "talking quietly?" Whispering. Murmering. Mumbling. Replacing two words with one smooths the sentence for easier consumption. It's easier to see people whispering than to first see them talking, and then read the next word and see them quietly talking. It's a needless step to get a sub-par result. 

Now we come to the problem of ellipses. The three little dots. I could fill twenty pages with all of the ellipses Stine uses. Page 69 has eight on it alone. Ellipses are for pauses or hesitation. They're usually used in dialogue, but Stine uses them in descriptions. Example: "At the puncture...the puncture...the blood-smeared puncture in her eye." I assume he's using the ellipses to elongate the image of the punctured eye. Problem is we don't have an image of a punctured eye. We just have "the puncture in her eye." No clue as to what it looks like. No specific details. The ellipses cloud up the picture rather than sharpen it. 

Another example (from the same page): She knew that when the wall fell in, the nail had been driven into Macaw's eye...eight inches...driven through her eye and into her brain." 

1) Repeating a word doesn't make it any clearer what you're trying to show. 

2) The nail had been driven into Macaw's eye and into her brain. Reads much smoother. 

3)Did she measure the nail to make sure it was exactly eight inches? It must be important because it's isolated by ellipses. 

4) An eight inch nail is ridiculous. When is the last time you saw an eight inch nail? Oh? Was it when you were nailing my mom?  Is the bad mom joke funny or not?  Either way it's your fault R.L. Stine. Yes, I'm being unreasonable. 

I'm hesitant to jump into the plot of the novel because it's a never ending hole of "what the f***" and coincidence. It's filled with evil undead twins and boring characters. Part of the problem is that after page 80 Lea Sutter doesn't have a chapter written in her point of view anymore until one of the last chapters. She's gone. Literally. She leaves her husband and children with her newly adopted twins to go to a conference somewhere.  So this leaves the reader with her husband Mark. Who is a very passive character. He does nothing. Things just happen to him. It's event after event of Mark getting outsmarted by these twins that Lea adopted for some reason. And then at the end of the novel he turns into an action hero. He jumps out of closed windows, hides for days from the police in the forest, breaks into a school, smacks the evil twins heads together until they go unconscious, and rescues a police officer. All that action happens within the last twenty pages. This novel is almost 400 pages long. 

The evil twins that Lea adopts have the desire to "rule the school." They want to posses all the little kids in the small town "Children of the Corn" style. They use their heat vision to kill anyone who gets in their way. Yes. They have heat vision that melts peoples throats.  These two are the only characters in the story that want something. Therefore they earn the Most Human award. Even though they murdered a bunch of people and blew up cars with their heat ray vision, and even though they possessed a bunch of kids, they wanted something and they wanted it bad. That's what humans do. That's what makes a story interesting. They were the only characters in the story that did something to reach a goal and I can relate to that. I wanted lasagna so I did a book review. Bam. I want my hag mother to die so I slip a few drops of Visine into her water everyday. Goals. 

If you don't remember it the title of this book is called Red Rain. And I know you're wondering so yes, it did rain blood. It rained blood for about three pages in the prologue and briefly when the story line caught back up to the prologue. Then it isn't mentioned again. I don't even know if the blood rain was real or not. It's very vague. Nobody else confirms it and Lea, the one who's POV we're in when we see it never mentions blood rain to anyone. So I guess what I'm saying is that the title doesn't make sense. A more accurate title should be The Demon Twins. Helltwins. Hellboys? Hellions? Not as Good as Goosebumps? 

You know what? Goosebumps sounds like a great way to get this terrible book out of my mind. I'm going to go choose my own adventure. An adventure without hags that make people read and write reviews of crappy books.