Customer Reviews

Books of Magic

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Obviously not up to the standard Gaiman started out with in the Books of Magic mini-series, but then again it was not expected to be. Only Gaiman can write like Gaiman. The plot is a little hap-hazard and it has a few confusing moments. The significance of Tim's dueling tatoos, what exactly happened to Cupid, what happened to that director guy... there are a lot of plot threads that are totally abandoned or unexplained. But the magic of the story is still in there somewhere. It may not be seen in the monsters and mermaids and fairys. The magic in the book is the beautiful way Tim and Leah and Molly's goofy adolescence is perfectly portrayed (even if Leah is several thousand years old). Good. Not Gaiman good. But good.

the strength of the books of magic fades slightly as you dig farther into the series,but eventually it delivers a wonderful story.

John Ney Rieber, The Books of Magic: Girl in a Box (DC Comics, 1999)

The Books of Magic has been an inconsistent series, and Girl in a Box, the fifth book in the series, typifies that perhaps better than any other single entry. Tim and Molly, separated in the last book, are still separated; Molly is off in Faerie, while Tim is facing down the demons tattooed onto his skin. The main story arc here is quite a good one; Tim and his old friend/nemesis Leah meet in San Francisco, then head off to the desert to find a place of magical power; the interaction between the two is very nicely done, and the plotline is interesting and well-written. All of the tertiary stuff in the book, though, could well have been done without.

If you've already gotten this far in the series, of course you're going to read this one; there's enough here for you to sink your teeth into. Others, start at the beginning and see if you get this far. ***

Neil Gaiman, who started this series off, is pure genius. Now that his name was on the books, it was passed to a not-so-good writer and a not-so-good artist. Accepting the slight drop in quality, I enjoyed Bindings, Reckonings, and Summonings... but THIS one was incredibly bad. The story takes random senseless turns, and while attempting to be incredibly deep it weaves a senseless truthless tale with no rhyme or reason to it. Such highlights include the English boy traveling to America where he finds these horrible American stereotypes speaking slang with every word, badly, and making dumb puns about rapping. Overall it's a stab at the depth of Gaiman that sees only the wild weirdness without understanding the rules of the game, and at times making mundane human wisdom seem smarter than that of all the worlds of fantasy. If you enjoyed the Books of Magic so far, dont ruin the experience by buying this book.

I first started reading the Books of Magic series about a year ago. I love this comic and thought the Girl in the Box was just as good as any other. This book disserves 5 stars.