Dark Cities Underground

The premise of this one is that all those children’s stories that we’ve been told were written by parents for their kids were actually true stories told by the children to their parents, who then exploited what they thought were just the vivid imaginations of their offspring. But the kiddos all went to the same underground world (because children can travel between worlds more easily than adults), and it’s the Underworld inhabited by Isis and Osiris and, most disturbingly, Set. Set’s trying to recover his old power and has manipulated the building of city subway systems around the world to build, essentially, a big power circle, or something, that will somehow do…something…? But one of the children who visited the realm is show more now all grown and wants to try to stop him.

Yeah, again, a cool idea but the execution didn’t live up to the potential and it really seemed to fall apart toward the end. show less

When he was a child, Jeremy Jones told his mother stories of the Neverwas - she then used the stories in a series of popular books. Now he's an adult, estranged from his mother, and living as a near recluse. Ruth Berry is an author researching a book about Jeremy and the stories of the Neverwas. But now something is stirring in the subways under the world's big cities, and Jeremy and Ruth are about to get pulled into another story of the Neverwas.

Goldstein's fantasy is an interesting imagining of a world below and yet part of our world, with great characters and a neat plot. The pace moves right along and takes the reader along for a nice ride - quick and entertaining. I really liked this one, but it's tough to tell why without major show more spoilers! show less

This is probably a three and a half star. I waffled about giving it four but in the end I couldn't. There's some great subtext here about the universality of myth and how it intersects with children's fiction, and Jungian archetypes, and victorian hubris. If it had all clicked together this would have vaulted into five star territory. But it never quite clicked.

Part of the problem for me is that it couldn't quite find its tone. Some other reviewers have said that the characters seem unreal because they don't show the emotional responses to events that one would expect of them. Thing is, the book is a blending of myth and realism and in myth and folklore characters don't act the way they do in the grocery store. So if the characters are show more mythic, then they aren't going to have the reactions we might expect. Isis doesn't have a nervous breakdown and get a prescription for anti anxiety medication when Seth chops up her husband, she goes looking for the parts.

Of course the whole point is that they are both - myths and regular folk. But somehow that doesn't gel. The characters end up being these confused neither fish nor fowl mixtures that don't ring true as regular folk or as mythic figure. Also the plot is really just a device to force the characters to wander around in the Nefer Lands. It really isn't strong enough to carry the book - and sometimes it teeters on the edge of just being a travelogue of this underworld that she's invented.

So even though this had the potential to be really outstanding, the elements didn't come together and it ended up just being a fun day trip to the outskirts of the perilous lands. Which is not so bad, really. show less

I’m not sure how I missed out on Lisa Goldstein, except maybe that her books are categorized as ``fantasy’’. Which they are, but this book, at least, has much more in common with Powers and Blaylock than McCaffery. Powers and Blaylock are an especially apt comparison with this novel, which deals with a world- and history-spanning intrusion of myth into our world.

Having read several of Lisa Goldstein's books (The Dream Years, Tourists, A Mask for the General, Walking the Labyrinth) I was happy when I saw on my local public library's shelf one I haven't: Dark Cities Underground. I was even happier when the first page of the book talked about Kabbalah, a hobby of mine: "The Shadow Committee had seen to it that BART was built in the shape of an aleph. Aleph was the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, the Kabbalistic sign of beginnings." Later on there are far less references to Hebrew mythology and much more to Egyptians, but the opening cheered me up enough. I feel though that I would have got more out of the book if I had been more versed on Egyptian history and literature.

I am lucky enough that show more I traveled on most of the underground lines covered in the book, including New York, London, Paris and the ay area in northern California. These locations (and Moscow, where I haven't made it yet) are integral part of the book. The cities mentioned in the title are along the lines of the lines of these transportation systems. Except that in the novel they transport way beyond to the known areas, both in physical and in metaphysical sense.

The third kind of background information that may help to have a deeper appreciation of the books is Children's books from the 20th century, particularly ones where children go on a journey on their own. These three distinct areas (underground transportation systems, Egyptian mythology, and children's book) are woven together in a magical and seamless way in Goldstein's book, forming the basis of a mystery novel, where a mother is searching for her lost daughter a man for his lost childhood and a woman for her dead husband. If any of these intrigues you I recommend you reading this book. I liked Goldstein's poetic prose and you might like it too. show less

Interesting story interlocking multiple children's book plots into a single large mythical world. It's very fun (and a bit terrifying) to imagine the underground world portrayed in this book.

Story was intriguing but didn't quite work for me. Still I'd like to read something else by this author.