The Graveyard Book Sample

The sample of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean's new book The Graveyard Book starts out with a few illustrations, which had me wondering if it was going to be primarily a picture book. I am sure the Kindle-rendered pictures, while fairly crisp, don't do justice to the originals-- this is one of the failings of e-ink, after all. The sample is otherwise very good, developing the setup right away and leaving on a cliffhanger. However, this has a very "prologue"-y, backstory feel-- the reader doesn't get a sense of who Bod is (indeed, the boy isn't even called Bod yet), and so we don't really know what the story will be.

We have to trust Gaiman, and while he's earned our trust as a storyteller with past works like Coraline, this sample might not be the best way to sell The Graveyard Book to a new reader of his works.