Book Review: Neverwhere

Title: Neverwhere

Author: Neil Gaiman

ISBN: 978-0-7553-2280-0

First Published: 1996

Blurb:

Under the streets of London there’s a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.

Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman

Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: neverwhere.

Review:

My previous experience of Neil Gaiman is fairly limited. Last year I read Stardust, which I enjoyed very much, and I watched Coraline, a film based on one of his short stories, a couple of months ago. Neverwhere was great fun to read.

Set in “London Below”, the novel is very inventive and exciting, following Richard Mayhew on various adventures through the bizarre city beneath a city. It is a place where there is an angel called Islington, where you really do have to “Mind the Gap”, where there is an earl at Earl’s Court, and where there are friars at Blackfriars. As the blurb says, these familiar places are cleverly twisted, making London Below come alive. It will be hard for anybody who has read this book to go to London and not imagine that there is indeed this city hiding beneath their feet.

The plot is exciting and paced well. It was a book that I struggled to put down, and when I had to, one that I looked forward to picking up again. Something that helped the pace was the length of each scene; each chapter was split into several sections that made it easy to read, and easy to get back into should you need to leave it for a while. It is written with a darkly humorous flair, and never gets bogged down with too much description. The language is easily accessible, and doesn’t take itself too seriously, making the novel a fairly easy read.

Another strong point to the novel are the characters. One immediately relates to the main character, Richard, who is forced through various tasks that he has to learn to overcome. The companions he meets, namely Door, the Marquis De Carabas, and Hunter, are all intriguing and have their own quirks and backstories. There are a wide variety of minor characters that Richard and his companions meet on the way, and they add to the bizarre nature of London Below.

I would recommend this book to any fan of fantasy. It has a more mature tone than other fantasy books, but still accessible for young adults. If you live in London, or ever visit, then this is definitely a book for you since it will make you see the capital in a way you never thought you would before.

Ratings:

Character: 10/10

Plot: 9/10

Style: 10/10

Overall: 10/10