For previous chapters in this review, click here or go there by clicking on the The Graveyard Book tag in the tagcloud in the bottom right hand column.

If you have not already done so, watch Neil read chapter three here.

Chapter 3 The Hounds of God

I am in two minds about this chapter. This chapter has some exquisite foreshadowing in it and that will be the main topic in today’s read-through review. On the other hand, the way Neil uses the vast majority of the elements of foreshadowing in this chapter is a bit disappointing to me.

Maybe I am thinking too complex. Maybe I have become used to foreshadowing being ingeniously hidden in the depths of a story. And maybe I should step away from that expectation to just enjoy the simple, glaringly obvious foreshadowing if it has been lain on the surface with intent and is happy to wave at us passers-by every chance it gets. Maybe I should just stop whining.

The chapter starts with a mood-setting description of a ghoul gate. Water-stained, with scraggly grass or rank weeds and often adorned with a headless statue or coated in fungus. And it’s not being concealed that we are going to see one of them from up close very soon.

Bod is six now and being confronted not only with a leaving Silas, but also a strict, puckering Russian-sounding woman with a pinched face and disapproving expression, who will be continuing Bod’s lessons while Silas is away. I, myself, thought at the initial meeting that Bod could have done without this teacher, but we soon learn otherwise. The woman goes by the name of Lupescu and anyone etymologically inclined will immediately recognise the wolf implication in the name. The new teacher has rented a house alongside the graveyard and will see Bod on a daily basis. Score two for foreshadowing.

Meanwhile, Silas has packed his antique black leather bag, which could have belonged to a Victorian doctor or undertaker, complete with padlock and heavy contents. Silas tells Bod that he will be away to gather information and uncover things. Why, Mr. Silas, would you need an extraordinarily heavy bag to gather information, dear sir ? Is there no such thing as a vampire travelling light ?

Miss Lupescu is here to take on Silas’s duties while he is away, most important of which is providing Bod with the food that the ghosts cannot. And she does this with verve. So much so that she manages to estrange Bod even more than she already had in their first meeting. Let’s just say that that was not a point for the team. And although Silas’s teachings had always been pragmatic and insightful, Lupescu chooses to take the more authoritative approach. She drills Bod on the different peoples of the world – the living, the dead, the day-folk, the night-folk, the ghouls, the mist-walkers, the high-hunters, the Hounds of God and the solitary types – and how to ask for help in all languages known to her. Foreshadowing number three and, yes… four. She even goes a far as reminding Bod that night-gaunts fly the red skies above Ghûlheim. Being Dutch, it’s not much of a secret that the German word Heim means home and it doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that Ghûlheim must be where the ghouls rest their weary heads. That makes five counts of foreshadowing so far.

And this is where we see the titular Hound of God for the first time. After one of Miss Lupescu’s disastrous lessons, Bod walks the graveyard and sees a large grey dog prowling, keeping away and slipping between the gravestones and shadows. Later we hear Bod ask Miss Lupescu whether the dog he saw was hers since it appeared when she arrived. In response, Miss Lupescu straightens her tie and answers no. I think you shouldn’t have lobbed that lump of soil at it, Bod!

Feeling unloved, abandoned and unappreciated, Bod falls asleep on grave with a water-stained, cracked memorial stone adorned by a headless angel hung in robes which look like ugly tree fungus. Hmm… where have we heard this before ? Pay-off number one.

Three ghouls appear. They scamper the walls of the graveyard looking for a gate for them to pass through. On the way they have a conversation about smelling a ‘ware dog’. Now this concept is a glorious one. The adjective ware is a derivative of an archaic form of the verb ‘to be aware’ and stems from its Germanic origin meaning ‘to observe’ or ‘to take care’. But it naturally also puts in mind the well known term of ‘were’ as in werewolf. So the ghouls are already aware of the guard weredog that prowls the graveyard and smell it alongside the graveyard. That reminds me of the fact that Lupescu does not live far away from the graveyard. Pay-off number two. When the ghouls arrive at the gate they find Bod sleeping there. It doesn’t take much convincing for Bod to agree that he will be more appreciated in the ghoul world and through the gate they take him.

The sky is the colour red of an infected wound, hung with an old, small, distant sun. The ghouls Bod meets wear the names of the first main courses that they had after being turned and I am assuming that with it they took nothing of their meals intelligence or I would have expected a bit more eloquence from the ghoul Harry S Truman.

While on the way to Ghûlheim (pay-off number three), Bod has seen enough to have changed his mind about going. He thinks of ways to escape and realises, as we have done, that the creatures flying in the sky are the same ones that Miss Lupescu had told him about – night-gaunts. Bod tries to call one to him with the shrill shriek that he was taught in his lesson, but the attempt is futile. At daybreak, the party of ghouls is noticebly smaller and moves on while Bod starts to worry about the howling that plagued them in the night.

On the second day, to prevent Bod from crying for help again, he is carried in a sack, which he manages to damage. In a bid for freedom Bod falls out the sack and lands on the steps to Ghûlheim hurting his ankle, right under the nose of a huge, grey dog. In panic, Bod tries to flee and trips off of the stair, away from safety and an exasperated and reproachful sounding Miss Lupescu. In the swoop that Bod hoped would come when he first called out to them, a night-gaunt scoops him out of the air and delivers him safely to the ground and Miss Lupescu. She explains that the creature came to Bod’s aid thrice – once when he called out to them and they flew to Miss Lupescu to warn her, the second time when they disposed of some ghouls at the nighttime fire that meant Bod harm and now to fly him to safety. Pay-off number four.

She also explains that she is a Hound of God, the name for the being that men call werewolves or lycanthropes ‘as they claim their transformation is a gift from their creator, and they repay their gift with their tenacity, for they will pursue an evil-doer to the very gates of Hell.’ Pay-off number five.

On Silas’s return, he find Bod and Miss Lupescu in an unprecedented good relation. He arrives with a stiff right arm and a model of the Golden Gate bridge. Hmmm… I won’t say that his trip to San Fransisco is necessary another foreshadowing but the condition of his arm certainly is. Silas questions the two politely by mentioning that he heard a rumour that Bod and Lupescu went further afield than Silas would be able to follow. I wonder if this is because he is a vampire?

The tally is clear. This chapter contains so much foreshadowing, it is seeping through the cracks to the point were it becomes a tad weary. The chapter feels crowded with so many dropped hints, almost all of which are payed-off within the same self-contained tale. Only the very last passage on the return of Silas contains an element of foreshadowing that we have not seen rewarded yet. And of course I might be making the mistake of assuming that all of these instances of foreshadowing are already payed-off and do not foreshadow an even larger event which is still to come, in which case I will gladly swallow my words and not only give the hat-tip that I do now, but the deep bow that is deserved. For the moment, Neil Gaiman is a master shadower if I have ever seen one to get so many of them is so few pages, but to keep the element of surprise at a more satisfying level, I would recommend to not make it all so glaringly obvious.

On to chapter four with what I hope is more suspense.