Books I like #1 – Neil Gaiman

If you like fantasy fiction and you haven’t read Neil Gaiman then I question your devotion to the genre. In fact, scratch that. If you like a good story full stop and you haven’t read Gaiman, then you’re missing out.


He’s an English author who spends most of his time in the States and a lot of his time on Twitter. He’s most well known for The Sandman series of graphic novels as well as the prose novels American Gods, Stardust and Coraline but he’s written so much in his ever-expanding career that it really would be surprising if you haven’t touched on his work in some form. For instance, he wrote the amazing recent Doctor Who episode entitled The Doctor’s Wife.

Why do I like him? Well, I could go on for a while, but my favourite thing about Gaiman and his writing is that he clearly loves stories. He has such a wealth of knowledge about myths, legends, fantasy and just pure story that his own work is infused with a sense of magic that you don’t find from many other authors. He is not just a great fantasy writer; he is the greatest living storyteller we have today. So rather than waffle on anymore I thought I’d just pick out a few of my favourite examples of his work…

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The Next Harry Potter

So what with the Harry Potter series of film adaptations drawing to an end next month – (although ‘drawing to an end’ doesn’t sound right for something that’s going to be so huge, dramatic and make hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide) – Total Film magazine had a look at 30 books that could be the next big kids fantasy series. Nice to see Irish authors featuring in the top two. Although I think they missed one by not including Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. I know they made a film based on the first three books – which I loved! Which is exactly why they should continue with them.

Also, they could have at least waited until Arthur Quinn comes out to write the article ;P