Neverwhere: A Novel
by Neil Gaiman
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Book Reviews of Neverwhere: A Novel
Book Review: For those who like their dark fantasy light and sweet ...
Summary: 4 Stars
Richard Mayhew doesn't entirely belong. He's a Scot in London, an office worker who can't meet deadlines, and a man whose fiancee thinks he would be just perfect if only he'd change ... most everything. But it's not until he aids Door, a mysterious young woman who he finds bleeding in the street, that things really start falling apart.
Richard quickly learns that London has a dark, dangerous, and magical underside, one that is almost entirely invisible to the city's respectable folks. In this hidden world people speak to and are somehow ruled by rats, a girl has the power to open anything, and an angel lives in a cathedral. In this same world, Door's family is brutally murdered, a young woman is simply sucked away into darkness, and the inhuman and implacable assassins Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar (eerily reminiscent of the bantering assassins Mr. Wint and Mr. Kidd from the Bond flick "Diamonds are Forever") terrorize everyone in the service of their secretive employer. Richard, cast out of his own world, has no choice but enter this world and help Door to find out who killed her family and why.
Though some of the details are fresh and entertaining, this is a familiar story. Richard is Bilbo Baggins is Arthur Dent, a bit of a misfit without any real survival skills thrust suddenly into a new and dangerous milieu. He may not become a hero, exactly, but he finds an inner strength he never knew he had and discovers that there's more to life than he had ever realized.
Richard's a sweet guy, and it's a sweet story, and, truth be told, people in the invisible world never really liked the upstairs world and are pretty content with their lot. For both better and worse, Neil Gaiman is no China Mieville, and he's no Charles de Lint, either. That's fine. There's plenty of room in this world for a guy who writes tales with both thrills and laughs like STARDUST and NEVERWHERE and AMERICAN GODS, flirting with danger and darkness but never really going there. If you don't mind dark fantasy that's light and sweet, try this one.
Book Review: A Lovely Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a very absorbing read. It's the kind of book where you suddenly realize that you are already on page 70 but you feel like you've only been reading for fifteen minutes. The next time you notice the page number, you're on 230 and, the time after that, you see that you have only 20 pages to go to the end!
So, the only bad thing I can about "Neverwhere" is that it wasn't long enough.
I do think, though, that there is enough meat on the bone for a decent sequel. Door still has to look for someone significant to her and there is also still some possibility concerning the rat-speaker girl.
I would say that this book and Tad Williams' "War of the Flowers" are the two best examples of modern urban fantasy out there today. Read both of these and you won't go wrong.
"Neverwhere" isn't original. I have read a lot of Neil Gaiman and he basically begs, borrows and steals everything he does in terms of plot, both for his novels and his short stories. But, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's not that he's a plagiarizer, it's that he taps into the universal stories and myths of Western culture. So, the tropes he uses are very familiar. He's more of a folklorist than a SF or F writer.
Gaiman's strength is as a writer, period. Although he farms well-worn ground, he paints such vivid characters and settings that you get swept away and simply get the chance to enjoy a really good book.
I'll conclude by saying that parts of this book are truly scary and chilling. Gaiman has the power, which is rare, to create real terror. The villains here are people (I use that term loosely) that you would NEVER want to meet. So, start this book early in the day so that if you read it all the way through in one sitting (and you probably will) you'll be finished by nightfall.
Then, lock your front door anyway.
Book Review: Horridly Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars
Darkly whimsical perfectly describes the mood set in this book, especially when you are crossing the line between the real world and the shadow world lying beneath the surface.
If you've ever been to London, or any major city for that fact, you've more than likely traveled in that city's underground. But what if there was a world, a very real world, underneath that. The true "Underground." A world completely unlike the one you know, where the rules of physics and biology don't necessarily apply.
Richard Mayhew is young man living an ordinary life, with a good job, a "good" girlfriend, and a good heart. It is his good heart that drives him to help a bloody, strange and oddly regal girl named Door. By helping Door, Richard finds himself unknowingly entering the Underground, where their allies are the marquis de Carabas and Hunter and their enemies are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, two of the most ghastly and other-worldly villains in that world.
Soon, Richard's life as he knows it doesn't exist anymore. He walks among the world, completely unseen by those around him. Knowing he must find Door, Richard makes his way literally into Underground, into a world he still doesn't fully believe exist. Trials and tribulations abound as he accompanies Door on her mission to find who murdered her family, all so he can return to the world he left behind. From the Rat-Speakers to a manor where tragedy occurred, to floating markets and finding the Blackfriars, and from an angelic home to a hellish cavernous maze (to name a few). Friends come and go, heroes are made and broken, and answers are found.
Go along for the journey as you fall through the cracks into a horridly fantastic dark world where you never know what is around the next shadowy corner...
Book Review: London tale is a comic and a film made into a fun, but quite too charming novel
Summary: 3 Stars
I'll admit it. I was charmed and bemused for a good long while into the novel. Gaiman can be quite witty in that British way, and I was drawn into the strangeness of a haunted world below and alongside our own London. But after a couple hundred pages, the endlessly cute remarks become just a bit too much ("he awoke in his own vomit. Well, hoped it was his own.") Our hero, Richard, is the bumbling Brit. He's not Mr. Bean, but he's that lovable nitwit of English humor--the earnest cad surrounded by sharper and more biting characters. By the end, of course, our hero manages to make something more of himself.
At a certain point, though, one begins to see that the book is more comic book than novel. The characters are two-dimensional, the story based on twisted Tube station names, and the play of events quite predictable. And there's the relentlessly intrusive charm and wit of the author, who can't go more than two paragraphs without his little remarks.
There are other issues, such as the dramatic introduction of soon-to-be-forgotten places and characters (particularly the rat-speaker, rats, and Floating Market), but Gaiman generally guides us with a competent hand. Croup and Vandemar are delightful characters, and Richard's wide-eyed bewilderment helps to introduce us to the horrors and ways of London Below.
About two thirds through the book, the tale sounds more like a screenplay than a novel, as if the author was merely novelizing the movie dialog and action sequences. Worse still, like a limited-budget television series, the book concludes in a mad rush. There is a quick farewell to all of the characters and a silly little ending. It's all in good fun, so long as your patience for English wit is high and your expectations are low.
Book Review: a cheap and deplorable cash-in by the talented Mr. Gaiman
Summary: 1 Stars
Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite authors. Unfortunately, he has a little problem; he's got a successful career in multiple mediums, winning awards and selling millions of copies of his novels, comics, and now films. This has led to the translation of EVERY work of his having a planned adaptation into other mediums. Neverwhere was a nice little low-budget BBC miniseries, and it worked well as that. It was basically Sandman-lite, but it had its charm. Now, since Gaiman has proved himself as a competent author of comics, novels, and scripts, it also HAS to be a book and a comic series. Similarly, Stardust was a nice novel, and it got a great movie. Now, there is a comic adaptation on the way, even though it was already an illustrated novel. WHY?
Encouraging his behavior by buying it in multiple forms is going to kill Gaiman artistically: rather than coming up with new material, we will be flooded with translations of the same old work over and over again. Case-in-point: his failed script for a children's cartoon series, Interworld, was published as a half-baked 180-page children's novel, with poor grammar and poor editing, in hardback for $14. Luckily, I borrowed it from a friend, because had I bought it, I would be infuriated.
Don't humor Gaiman in his artistic constipation; he's a GREAT author. Sandman, Mirrormask, Good Omens, these are TRUE CLASSICS of their genres, and the man has the potential to change film, comics and literature, if he only continues to create original content. If we allow him to coast in his career by simply cashing in on his already made franchises, he will fail to make an impact. True fans of Gaiman, stay away from this, and all other remakes of his work.