Neverwhere: A Novel by Neil Gaiman Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Neverwhere: A Novel
Book Review: A richly imagined urban fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard Meyhew has a good, respectable life with a good job and a fiancée. It's a typical, boring existence that he doesn't really feel any satisfaction in. His whole world is thrown into turmoil when he kindly helps a bleeding homeless girl despite the protestations of his callous and cold fiancée who would rather continue on to their important meeting than help a fellow human being. He brings the girl to his apartment and she introduces herself as Door. He then encounters two very frightening men, Mr. Vandemar and Mr. Croup, who are searching for the girl, claiming to be her concerned family. Richard continues to protect the girl and she soon leaves his life as abruptly as she entered it. The next day, he tries to go through his daily routine as usual and finds that everyone ignores him. It's as if he doesn't exist at all. His desk at work is empty and his apartment was being sold as he was in it. His only course of action is to find Door and try to get his life back. He has no idea that his journey will take him to London Below, a hidden, dark part of London that people who live above never see. It's populated by the forgotten people of Above, royalty, merchants, angels, assassins, and creatures we had all hoped were just the stuff of nightmares. Richard has to come to terms with this other world and find the hero within himself to survive.
I don't really know why it took me so long to start reading this book. It's been sitting on my shelf for over a year. I guess I figured I could always get to it later. I've read and love most of Neil Gaiman's other works and this one was no different. This is the typical story of a normal, boring guy of the modern age being thrown into a supernatural world he knows nothing about and his struggle to become a hero or die. It's a situation seen very commonly in urban fantasy, but he makes the genre his own. I became completely caught up in this world within our own. I loved that the setting was familiar, such as Harrods, with fantastical goings on. In this case, Harrods served as the place for The Floating Market, a moving bazaar for the inhabitants of London Below to sell their wares unseen by normal people. The book really sparked my interest in London's more mundane places. The writing is incredibly descriptive and elegantly written. The language flows seamlessly and just sucks you in. Sometimes I would completely lose track of time while reading. The world feels complete, but the book just couldn't encompass the whole thing. We just see what the individual characters see and some other glimpses from conversations, but it's still shrouded in mystery at the end of the novel. To me, this is a strength of the novel that it can be expanded upon and the novel is just a small slice of the larger picture.
I truly loved or loved to hate all of the characters without exception. All of them had their own complete stories. I never knew if the secondary characters where on Door and Richard's side or not until the very end. My favorite character was Richard because he started out as a boring businessman with no sense of adventure and grew into so much more because of his exposure to this other dark and savage world. He thought his life was pretty wonderful at the beginning, but he later realizes that his fiancée is a cold person who wishes he were someone else and his job just makes him into a mindless corporate automaton. I really enjoyed following his hero journey throughout the novel.
Neverwhere is a richly imagined urban fantasy that takes the familiar and makes it distorted and dark. I highly recommend it to just about anyone.
Book Review: A very uncharming book; not suitable for children
Summary: 2 Stars
Having read Stardust, which I liked (although which is one of the very rare books that is not as good as the movie, IMHO), I was disappointed in Neverwhere (which I listened to on audiobook). It's like a very ugly Wizard of Oz (which the author at least cops to in the end), where instead of Dorothy we get befuddled Richard, who seems to have no strong feelings about anything except that he wants to go home. And, he's not exactly passionate about that; just sort of bemusedly tagging along after the girl Door and her entourage as she seeks vengeance for the murder of her family. The story is confusing, the bad guys disgusting as well as sadistically violent, and everything in Under London is dirty, uncharming and like some 70's movie version of a bad drug trip. Definitely not Oz, and definitely not for young children. When Richard finally gets home, he's not happy with everything he ever wanted, so he decides to go back to Under London. Why? I have no idea. He seems very likely to end up dead there, as it's a dangerous place and he's clueless. Then again, I found myself clueless as well, and wondering about the motivations of all the characters. The plot is a jumble. [And why does the marquis share a name with the character from Puss n Boots?] The concept of another world under London and in abandoned tube stations was interesting, the story is just not executed well.Book Review: Absolute drivel
Summary: 1 Stars
I grabbed a copy of Neverwhere at an airport bookstore after only a few minutes of shopping and I wish that I had taken more time in my book selection. This was among the worst books I have read in many years. I started off disliking the main character after 20 pages and it didn't get any better as the novel progressed. There is no explanation for the background or functioning of "London Below." There is a mishmash of bizarre characters, but none of them are well developed. The entire story ends on a whimper. Save your self and avoid this novel.Book Review: Absolutely Amazing!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Reading this book is like "reading" The Matrix except it's a thousand times better. I highly reccomend this book to everyone.Book Review: Adam West! A script for you to read!
Summary: 2 Stars
Dating myself here, Adam West played Batman in the famous '60's TV series. It was played for laughs, with lots of guest stars and cartoon balloons whenever the (very fake) fighting took place: Boffo! Pow! Whap! Kerplow! You get the idea.
The villains in this book are just the same. They're eternal, like most of Gaiman's characters in this book and in American Gods, so they have lots of neat powers. Here we are "treated" to regular demonstrations of their sadism, which are repetitive and boring. Most of the other characters are as shallow as those in any period comic book. And be forewarned: just as in American Gods, things are not always as they seem, with characters switching from good to bad. One wonders if the author has some hangup with organized religion, since evil abounds in the supposedly godly.
Careful readers of this and American Gods will also note that Gaiman indulges himself by writing about some pretty dark fantasies. The violence, although pervasive, is thankfully not explicit, and visitors to London might enjoy the frequent references to London Above. But I've sworn off Gaiman. I wouldn't risk another book in which a saintly character turned out to be Lucifer, or Machiavelli, or King George the Moron.