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A review by marthmuffins
The Monarch of the Glen by Neil Gaiman
2.0
The Monarch of the Glen - 2.5/5
Gaiman ain't the most popular bloke right now but I wanted to read through the one thing of his I own that he was sole author of just to get it out of the way, that being the novellette The Monarch of the Glen.
It's a sequel to American Gods set in the Far North of Scotland, or Far South of Norseland, and if you've read that book it essentially reads as one of the tangents from that that novel where the main character, Shadow, goes on a side quest for 50-60 pages. It was fine, pretty much a very standard Gaiman story with all the stock characters he uses: Shadow is still really boring protagonist, there's a strange mysterious old man with an ominous name, a slightly psychopathic and ammoral lackey is running around as comic relief, and a woman who's all mysteriously magical, pretty, and who inexplicably wants to have sex with Shadow, the most boring man in the world.
Again, it's fine, I like getting the mythology gags this time round and the way he describes the landscape is pretty if not exactly fresh, but it's not really worth seeking out unless you LOVED American Gods. It does set up a short arc which I think is continued in a further novella, Black Dog, and there's a prospective 3rd novella in the works to wrap up Shadow's UK vacation somewhere on the horizon, leading into the eventual release of American Gods 2.
So overall, it's an okay read. Nothing more, nothing less.
Gaiman ain't the most popular bloke right now but I wanted to read through the one thing of his I own that he was sole author of just to get it out of the way, that being the novellette The Monarch of the Glen.
It's a sequel to American Gods set in the Far North of Scotland, or Far South of Norseland, and if you've read that book it essentially reads as one of the tangents from that that novel where the main character, Shadow, goes on a side quest for 50-60 pages. It was fine, pretty much a very standard Gaiman story with all the stock characters he uses: Shadow is still really boring protagonist, there's a strange mysterious old man with an ominous name, a slightly psychopathic and ammoral lackey is running around as comic relief, and a woman who's all mysteriously magical, pretty, and who inexplicably wants to have sex with Shadow, the most boring man in the world.
Again, it's fine, I like getting the mythology gags this time round and the way he describes the landscape is pretty if not exactly fresh, but it's not really worth seeking out unless you LOVED American Gods. It does set up a short arc which I think is continued in a further novella, Black Dog, and there's a prospective 3rd novella in the works to wrap up Shadow's UK vacation somewhere on the horizon, leading into the eventual release of American Gods 2.
So overall, it's an okay read. Nothing more, nothing less.