American Gods by Neil Gaiman

His new book, 'Coraline' is better...and much shorter!

That's what I want to hear! Shall look it up ...

But you would be much, much better off buying Dream Country by Neil than either... stories of a man kidnapping a muse, what cats dream of, a superheroine who is indestructible and suicidal and uses moulds of her own face as ashtrays and the Faustian pact made by Shakespeare. All that plus some of the most sumptuous art in comics.

Yeah, the stories in 'Dream Country' are certainly some of his best. But I didn't much like the art-work, certainly when compared to the more experimental style of 'The Kindly Ones', and the down-right jaw-dropping beauty of 'The Wake' (the first comic to be done completely in pencil, I hear). 'Smoke and Mirrors', his prose short story collection, is just as good for those who feel dirty reading a book with pictures.

I haven't read 'American Gods' but my friend loves it, says it's one of the best things he's read in ages, and keeps telling me to read it. I guess it's different strokes for different folks.

I like bits of the artwork in the Kindly Ones - the way Hempel draws Loki as the cop is just perfect, and all the stuff with Lucifer is spot-on, but on the whole, I found it a bit too unrealistic. Kelley is probably my favourite artist on the series, with A Game of You being my favourite collection, but Dream Country is such a good jumping-off point. (Much better than starting at the beginning, because 1-7 aren't at all representative of what Sandman is about) As for American Gods - it is a curate's egg. When he stops wanting to be Steven King and focusses on being Neil, it is very good, but there are long stretches where he is clearly writing within himself and it is frustrating. But having said that, I found it amazingly hard to move from writing comics to fiction myself, and still hate with a passion having to describe stuff that I just used to tell the artist to get on with, and I only dabbled in comics for a year or two. If I'd been writing full-time in that field for best part of eight years and been winning awards, I'd imagine the transition to be very hard. Coraline is good though.

I like bits of the artwork in the Kindly Ones - the way Hempel draws Loki as the cop is just perfect, and all the stuff with Lucifer is spot-on, but on the whole, I found it a bit too unrealistic. Kelley is probably my favourite artist on the series, with A Game of You being my favourite collection, but Dream Country is such a good jumping-off point. (Much better than starting at the beginning, because 1-7 aren't at all representative of what Sandman is about) As for American Gods - it is a curate's egg. When he stops wanting to be Steven King and focusses on being Neil, it is very good, but there are long stretches where he is clearly writing within himself and it is frustrating. But having said that, I found it amazingly hard to move from writing comics to fiction myself, and still hate with a passion having to describe stuff that I just used to tell the artist to get on with, and I only dabbled in comics for a year or two. If I'd been writing full-time in that field for best part of eight years and been winning awards, I'd imagine the transition to be very hard. Coraline is good though.

Yeah, I agree about the first set of Sandman issues, they're not much of an introduction to the style, only the plot. On a different note, are you the Andrew Pack that wrote 'surgical jenga' and 'they ate the truth'?

Yes, I am. I take it you've come over from thoughtcafe? Welcome aboard.

Well, when you said "I found it amazingly hard to move from writing comics to fiction myself", I did a yahoo search on your name (umm, stop me when I start to sounds like a stalker) and came across thoughtcafe. I love those stories, by the way. Brilliant imagination there, and nice and short, like all the best fiction.