The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel

From the outset, The Ocean at the End of the Lane reads like a memoir. The author appears to be recalling events from his childhood. There seem to be some traumatic events that occur, including bad babysitters. Then things start to get weird. The babysitter starts to exhibit Roald Dahl level of meanness. She also has a knack for intuiting any attempt to escape and to top it off has an affair with the Dad. Then it turns out that she is not just a mean person, but a demonic being. Luckily, the new person down the street has good mystical abilities. They narrator is able to be saved and go on to live a normal life. 

In the afterward, the author makes it clear that while the character of the narrator is based on his own life, everyone else is made up. Though the story is told from the background of an adult recollecting the past, there is a distinct child's perspective. The adult world is very different than the child's world.

The Wolves in the Walls

Neil Gaiman is a great storyteller. Nobody believes the child who says there are wolves in the walls. They have all sorts of excuses for the wolves being there. Finally the wolves come out and the family is forced to live outside. They finally sneak through the walls to get a prized possession and then retake the house. It is a simple tale of childhood innocence and ingenuity (as well as resolution of nightmares.)

Norse Mythology

Norse mythology is not as well documented as Roman and Greek mythology. Stories were mostly written down in the Christian age in order to help with the understanding of some common expressions. The stories are a little different from the comic book versions. Loki is an integral part of the gods. However, he is a crafty trickster. He often gets into trouble with his trickery. However, he was a way of getting out of trouble also. Thor's hammer came from as a result of his plot to get Thor's wife's hair back. (He tried to make his dwarf crafters lose, but instead they made a "smaller" hammer that Thor ended up loving.) There are also stories that explain why salmon migrate upstream and other bits of "science". Interestingly, the stories had originated in a germanic area. There is a lot that is lot documented, and what we have was only written to help understand some of the Scandinavian sagas.

Stardust

A girl tells a boy she will give him anything he wants if he finds the fallen star. He goes on a quest to find it. He enters a magical world of fairyland and eventually finds that the star is a girl. In the process he has all sorts of magical adventures.

We returns and finds the girl is engaged - and in fact had been so since their initial conversation. She had thought she had led him on a futile quest. However, she has not been married, and saved herself to marry him since he had completed the quest. He contemplated the situation and decided that since she had promised him what he wanted, he would like her to marry the other guy.

He instead, marries the fallen star, and discovers that he is also only half human (and half magical). Due to other deaths, they now had the right to rule fairyland. However, they left a regent in place (who they had helped free in the adventures), while they embarked on a large honeymoon tour. When returned, they decided she was doing a good job, and let her continue to rule while the continued exploring.

This is a fantasy book and really hard to get in to.