Katherine

Indescribable

Phenomenal. Having started and never finished this two years ago, I finally took the time to plough through it in essentially three sittings over the course of a week. So, so good. Both Sir Terry and Neil Gaiman are firm favourites of mine, so it was inevitable I would love it. Still - having not reached this point in my original, abortive attempt - the appearance of a certain, rather thin gentleman who speaks exclusively in capitals was a moment of pure glee.

Overall, this is a must-read for any Pratchett or Gaiman fan, though I would say it trends overall towards the Discworld feel.

A book of strange, magical quality. On its second reading, it loses nothing of its charm, its mystique - there are always tiny details one forgets, pieces of the puzzle which didn't make sense the first time around. This is the book which inspired me to begin writing again. It is also the book I associate most closely with one of the most magical periods in my own life. Anyone who hasn't read it, should. Anyone who has, should read it again. Neil Gaiman is, without doubt, one of the best writers of fiction alive - if one of the oddest.

Superb, with wit, humour and a dark underlying message: that a future totalitarianism is far more likely to take the form of stupefying propagandisation than the brutality of, say, Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four