The Graveyard Book...

...is a ghastly good read.

I read it all through one sitting. It took me just 4.5 hours to finish the book--an action which Terence thinks "a waste of S$20". But I really couldn't make the book last any longer than that. I just couldn't put it down.

Written by Neil Gaiman (standing applause please) for young adults, i.e. children, it's about a little boy who's parents and sister were killed by the man Jack. He was subsequently brought up in a graveyard, and whose guardian--though hinted, never spoken--might be a vampire.

Isn't it disgustingly macabre a setting for a children's book? Yes! But the fantastical setting just pulls the reader through the pages like magic. And magic was what Gaiman wanted to give his readers, and magic was just what the readers received.