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Loading... Neverwhereby Neil Gaiman
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won't like
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Fantastically crafted dark fantasy. Neil Gaiman is a genius. ( )Easily my favourite Gaiman, and one of the rare books that leave me slightly jealous - 'awww Neil, I wanted to write that,' the soul seems to say. The premise is simple enough: below the London we all know and (ahem) love there's a London that houses all the nobodies who have become literally invisible in London above. It is a premise that Gaiman works with beautifully to produce memorable characters, page-turning events and - best of all - the most inspiredly nightmarish interpretation of the London underground ever. For this reason, knowing London helps with the appreciation of the novel; enjoying it without ever having been there is of course possible but one requires a vaster imagination and probably a map or two. So why the missing half star, if I love it so much? Purely personal preference, I was not amused at the ending re: my favourite character, but that's a quibble: as always with Gaiman, this is well-written, compelling, darkly humorous and clever. If you've enjoyed any of his others, you'll enjoy this. This is a perfectly good Neil Gaiman book, but it's pretty much exactly like all the other Neil Gaiman books I've read. It has the same plot - a perfectly ordinary person finds himself suddenly involved in an extraordinary fantasy world and must go through a process of self-discovery and questioning his own sanity while becoming the unlikely hero of the fantasy world. The characters are fun and well-crafted, but not particularly original. Nothing really came as a surprise. That's not to say I didn't enjoy the book - after all, Neil Gaiman is really good at writing Neil Gaiman books. But this is pretty much a run-of-the-mill Neil Gaiman book. I listened to the audiobook, read by the author, and the audiobook is very enjoyable. Gaiman has a nice voice, and his reading is dramatic and he's good at giving all of the characters individual voices. I liked this book alot and I really enjoyed the whole setting I find myself wishing for more maybe another book to finish where this one left off, different than anything I have ever read. Since there are so many fine reviews here, I will only add the reasons I enjoyed this book. I liked the speculation about angels and "other" worlds in amongst our own which are unseen but very present. I loved Richard Mayhew, but am hoping that Gaiman will write a sequel to pursue the character a bit further. The creepiness was very creepy and the characters were interesting and unique. It was simply a fun tale and that is the sort of book I enjoy.
The novel is consistently witty, suspenseful, and hair-raisingly imaginative in its contemporary transpositions of familiar folk and mythic materials (one can read Neverwhere as a postmodernist punk Faerie Queene). Readers who've enjoyed the fantasy work of Tim Powers and William Browning Spencer won't want to miss this one. And, yes, Virginia, there really are alligators in those sewers--and Gaiman makes you believe it. The millions who know The Sandman, the spectacularly successful graphic novel series Gaiman writes, will have a jump start over other fantasy fans at conjuring the ambience of his London Below, but by no means should those others fail to make the setting's acquaintance. It is an Oz overrun by maniacs and monsters, and it becomes a Shangri-La for Richard. Excellent escapist fare. Gaiman's gift for mixing the absurd with the frightful give this novel the feeling of a bedtime story with adult sophistication. Readers will find themselves as unable to escape this tale as the characters themselves.
References to this work on external resources.
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(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)
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