Yeah, if you didn't like The Dark is Rising, I'm not sure I'd suggest reading the rest of them. Unless you want a foundation for the great Will/Bran fanfic out there.

I definitely don't recommend them in audiobook form, by the way. I don't think that would work for me at all. But audiobooks often don't, and they do for you, so maybe that recommendation doesn't make sense.

They are being read by a British guy! They should be working! But they are not very engrossing; I have thought that I might be more into it if I actually read it. But I have no motivation to do that when I can just get through them in my car and say what is the deal with this classic fantasy series, three stars.

Fair enough. I don't think they're quite as mindblowing as they once were. There are a lot more epic YA fantasy series out there now than there used to be.

ETA: I like the Welsh bits.

So, after seeing the discussion here, I checked the online catalog for my local library, then went across the street to check out Smoke & Mirrors, since it's been something like a decade since I read Murder Mysteries.

If you look at the summary of the events in the story, I think it's reasonable to think that it might be gendered violence. However, in the actual context, it doesn't ping me at all.

Some reasons why: If you're talking about love and death and murder and justice (which the story is), then there has to be love and death. There's just no way around it. I find a male narrator for this story to be less problematic than a female one for a host of reasons. Ok, so then his primary victim can either be male or female. Given that the angels are coded male (for all that it's made clear that they're not, really), making his victim male changes the story in very significant ways (for all that it's not fair, homosexual relationships are not seen as universal). Now, the roommate or the kid could have been male without there being a significant change (apart from the thing about women named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan), but I don't think that's the primary objection.

As for the necrophilia...sometimes Gaiman writes some sick shit, yo. I think the point of that was that it was sick. But also, to emphasize the feeling within the nature of love (as presented in the story) to have and be had entirely, rather than moved on from, or spit in the sink. There are a couple of bits of dialogue that I think are key:

"I love you," she said.
"Thank you."

and

"Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

If one had a fucked-up view of love, one might ask how Tink could love him, but Susan is all she lives for (much as was the case with Saraquel and "Death").

Were I in high school, I would write a literary analysis essay about how Gaiman is proposing that love is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

I think that is the point at which he lost it, jealousy of her love for her child. The parallel with the angel story implies that to me.

Okay, now that I'm home and have reread the story...

It can't be both?

It it is certainly possible for a story to be both. Given that this particular story is explicitly about justice and vengeance and jealousy and love and whether anyone but God can really be considered responsible for anything that happens as a result of His Divine and Mysterious plan... I feel like context matters.

Plus I think the ending is fairly ambiguous about retribution. He is narrating it from 10 years later, yes. We don't know where he is. The story he tells us ends with him confined in a small silver room, at peace, waiting for someone to let him out. Which is how Raguel's story began.

I believe his crimes are meant to be a disturbing revelation (so to speak) and to raise questions. I don't know how to address your concerns because I don't understand what they are. I don't mean that dismissively, just... I genuinely don't understand.

Is anyone else following Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" on Twitter @NYerFiction. It's striking me after six tweets that I'm not caught up yet, and I have much less patience with not being caught up than I would on a page.

If you're talking about love and death and murder and justice (which the story is), then there has to be love and death.

Part of the problem is, I don't think the parallel works the way it's set up. He's in LA by chance and didn't know she was there, and there's no sign, in his description of their encounter, of anything that would lead to murder. Now you can argue that he's remembering it wrong because of Raguel taking his memories, but

a) There's a point at which the narrator becomes so unreliable it's impossible to say what the story really is, and

b) That actually makes it worse, since now *all three* victims are reduced to objects we know nothing about. They're only there to produce an emotional reaction in the reader.

He is narrating it from 10 years later, yes. We don't know where he is.

Actually, he refers early on to a wife, children, and a vocation. So it sure looks to me like he got off scot-free.

Bottom line: a woman invites a man into her home and has a sexual encounter with him. As a result, she, her daughter, and a female friend are all corpses rotting in the ground, while the man is forgiven by literal divine fiat. And while I see DebetEsse's point about context and the need for parallels, I can't believe it was impossible to do that without dragging out the refrigerator.

Oh, I don't think it qualifies as fridging, as it does not serve to give him something to react to (given that he doesn't remember it, and you can easily read the story and miss it entirely.). I also find it less disturbing and problematic than I would if he had, for example, beaten a girlfriend (to death or not) or stalked and raped someone. Triple homicide and necrophilia is far enough removed from what I can readily port into my own life that there isn't a hint of the "well, you should forgive him if he did it because he loves you" message that either of those would have.

But, then again, I think that the story posits that the concept of "love" that's hard-wired into the Universe is broken.

there's no sign, in his description of their encounter, of anything that would lead to murder

Not a pre-meditated murder, certainly.

(And I think Gaiman consistently lives right on that boundary for your point a. Like, he has a summer house there.)

But I think his current state, and the disconnect he feels from the events he's retelling (all new cells every 7 years) are an indication that forgiveness, wiping the slate clean, lead to him having a good life. Vengeance would not have done that. It wouldn't have brought them back or anything good into the world.

literal divine fiat

Angelic, at best. More likely: demonic. Which I think is relevant.