Shadow Falls by Simon R. Green
Shadow Falls is a city. It's much like Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or Simon Green's Nightside. It's a supernatural area doesn't exist in normal space but you can get to if you know how or are really, really lost. The people in Shadow Falls may or may not have actually existed. Some are people, some are dead people who came back, some are rock stars whose legend became greater than the person, and some are gods, cartoon characters, or novel characters whose popularity has waned but aren't yet completely forgotten. They come to Shadow Falls because of the Forever Door. The Forever Door is the passage to the afterlife and is guarded by Father Time.
Naturally, something has to go wrong. One of the central characters grew up in Shadow Falls but doesn't know it. He forgot about it when his family fled when he was 10. He is prophecied to destroy the Forever Door. When his parents die he finds a note from his Grandfather that leads him back.
Murder is supposed to be impossible in Shadow Falls. But there has been a rash of murders with no clues. An unstoppable being known as the Wild Childe is responsible.
An army of fanatical Christians has decided to take control of the Forever Door.
Simon R. Green rocks. He tells fairly original stories and tells them in a way that keeps you reading.
Schrödinger's Ball by Adam Felber
Over on the right side of this page you'll see a link to Adam Felber's Blog. Adam also appears most weeks on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me", is a stand up comic, and writes for some TV shows.
This is a rather surreal story. It hops between several groups of people with no apparent connection. But it's funny so you keep reading. The book crashes somewhere around page 90 and has to be rebooted. Near the end of the book the various stories finally come together.
It helps to have some understanding of the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle and/or Schrödinger's Cat model. Not completely necessary, but it helps. Basically, photons and electrons and whatnot exist not so much in a definate place and time but rather a cloud of places where they probably are until actually seen. Once seen they exist in a definate place. Schrödinger's Cat model was supposed to explain this behavior while pointing out how absurd it is. You put a cat in a box with a vial of poison and a uranium molecule. There's a 50/50 chance of that molecule decaying in one hour. If it decays the poison is released and that cat dies. Otherwise the cat lives. But until you open the box and look the cat is both alive and dead and neither alive nor dead.
One of the stories involves a person talking who can't seem to stop running into Schrödinger despite the fact that Schrödinger died several decades before. Schrödinger won't stop lecturing about anything and everything and continually moans about how he wished he never thought of the cat because nobody understands the story right.
Another part of the story involves a man who shoots himself in the head while cleaning his gun in his basement. He then goes out and hangs out with his friends for the next several days. Nobody saw him die or found the body so he goes about his life, although his behavior is quite odd, until someone finds him.
Essential
I picked up Essential Doctor Strange, Essential Spider-Man, and Essential Fantastic Four a few weeks back. All three books include 20-30 of the original stories. They're fairly cheap in both price and quality. The Essential Doctor Strange came right apart. Pages everywhere. The paper is essentially rejected toilet paper. Still, for $15 each they're not bad.
Doctor Strange sucks. I find the stories lame and the dialog comically bad.
Spider-Man was pretty good from the start, but there's still some places where you can see how dialog writing has improved over the years.
The Fantastic Four isn't as good as Spider-Man, but it's not awful. You can really see how the dialog writing has improved.
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