(My reviews are mostly to help me remember what happened in a book and why I liked/disliked it.)
Soo, the beginning of my favourite Stross series. You know: magic is advanced maths, kinda powerful geeks and really powerful burocracy.
I think it's noticable that Atrocity Archives is an early Stross book. In the first half, the Shibboleth/Shibboleet dropping is sometimes very obvious and a bit annoying. (Redeeming Stross though, he is actually knowledgable enough to actually use all those jokes, tropes and catchphrases, so it's ok.)
Plot: We meet Bob, who wants to join Active Service in the Laundry. Angleton and Andy, his bosses, send him to the USA, where he meets and saves Mo, who then returns to London and moves in with him (after Bob saves her again at her own doorstep).
To draw out their enemies Mo, Bob and secret reinforcements travel to Amsterdam for research, where Mo is promptly abducted to another universe. Bob joins the reconnaissance team. Turns out, in a close parallel universe to our own one, the Nazis finished their arcane project by summoning an Infovore and travelling to that world (some ice giants included). The Infovore sucked the universe dry and is now trying to get all of itself over to Bob's universe. With judicious use of some Hands of Glory and an H-Bomb they manage to save Mo, Bob and about half the crew.
(My reviews are mostly to help myself remember what I thought and why.)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane is most definitely a Neil Gaiman book. It also feels like a Pratchett book - a bit less humor and a bit more beauty in its sentences, maybe.
It plays on myths and real life. And on childhood - it's not a coming-of-age story, it's a story about childhood with all its dangers: parents, siblings, friends and nannies who are really daemons from another world. Well, at least another part of the world.
This book made me feel good, through all the horrible things that happened in it. Made me feel right at home. It is - to me - much less dark than Coraline, because it's so much more mythical. The Ocean at the End of the Lane plays on myths and archetypes, making me feel safe and at home though all its darkness (opposed to Coraline, which felt right, too, but muuuuch more scary).
I loved the wise Lettie, and her mother, and of course her grandmother (and the maid-mother-crone dynamic of course). I loved the protagonist, a young boy, who deals with life as well as he can. I loved his family -- it all felt very, very real. But then, the best fairytales are.
(I write reviews mostly to remind myself why I liked a book.)
I would have loved this book as a child, and I still love it as a grownup (Gaiman tends to write like that). It is paced well, written wonderfully and rings true (in a very similar way American Gods does, but a bit toned-down to the way children see the world). Technically it is a coming-of-age story. I spent a long afternoon reading it and feel a lot better for the time spent.