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The Margarets by Sheri S. Tepper (2007)
This was my first Sheri S. Tepper book![1. I was supposed to have read The Gate to Women’s Country for a college class on dystopias and uptopias. I never did, probably because it was the end of the semester and I was tired of all the depressing stuff.] I do know enough about the history of scifi to know that Tepper is one of its major authors, and so I knew I’d pick up one of her books eventually. I choose The Margarets mainly because of its cover, which is cool in an early-2000s sort of way. I was also into the story, which is complicated and multi-layered.
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Clariel by Garth Nix
First off, if you’re like me and expecting dragons from the get-go and was VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT– sorry, but it doesn’t show up until way at the end and it’s not even a real dragon, so. Secondly, forget the thing with the dragon because Clariel is AMAZING and WONDERFUL and it was totally worth obsessing over for a year or so prior to publishing. No regrets! I love the Abhorsen series. A LOT. And so I was super excited to find out that Garth Nix was writing another book set in that world. Tbh, the only thing I’d be excited about MORE is if Diana Wynne Jones came back…
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Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Yes, the TV show came before the book! Which explains why I kept thinking “this feels like an adaptation.” I have a love-hate relationship with book adaptations of movies; mostly they always feel derivative and pointless, and not even Neil Gaiman can make one great. The Neverwhere novelization is better than most, but it still can’t top the TV show. The problem might be because when you’re writing an adaptation, you have to stick pretty close to the original source. You can expand things a little (like internal dialogue or whatever), but basically you’ve got a paint-by-numbers kind of thing. It ends up feeling very stale and forced, and it’s…