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Loading... Neverwhereby Neil Gaiman
  
» 62 more Books Read in 2016 (76) Magic Realism (24) Favourite Books (352) 20th Century Literature (167) Books Read in 2015 (103) Top British Books (152) A Novel Cure (59) Books Read in 2020 (154) Urban Fiction (2) Books Read in 2013 (106) Top Five Books of 2018 (521) Top Five Books of 2016 (627) Books Read in 2017 (746) Ghosts (23) First Novels (8) Books tagged favorites (117) To Read - Horror (17) Fiction For Men (26) Year 9 Reading List (15) My favourite books (74) Pageturners (38) Strange Cities (5) Favourite Books (27) Books on my Kindle (79) Alphabetical Books (113) Speculative Fiction (12) Best middle grade books (111) Five star books (950) Gothic Fiction (121) Sometimes, timing is everything about appreciating a book, or not. In this case it's the not. It's a dark inventive journey through scenes of a nightmare - but, as a base it's got the nice guy with well, niceness going for him, and the obligatory controlling bitch girlfriend who encounters the (manic pixie) dream girl who leads him to excitement. So Door isn't a total MPDG, but she's opal eyed as her most distinctive feature and opening is her something special but she's not otherwise as interesting as the character "actors" of the ensemble, and Richard is, well, persistently nice, which has been severely re-coded in it's meaning since the mid-90s. That Richard's niceness isn't a shallow cover and Door has real problems, goals and abilities doesn't entirely excuse it for riding an trope that's since had it's ugly underbelly exposed. (  ) quondame | Jul 10, 2020 |  brilliant, different, magical, underground, all the words (  ) goliathonline | Jul 7, 2020 | Re-imagining London through London Below in such an inventive way. You'll never think of a tube station in quite the same way after reading this. ( ) misterebby | Jul 5, 2020 | I enjoyed this after a bit. The first 30 to 40 percent I found slow. But the book picks up momentum and I liked how we get to see more of the London Below via other characters when we're not following the main characters of Richard and Door. Richard Mayhew finds himself helping a young woman one night and it changes his life forever. Without realizing it, helping the woman named Door will cost Richard his life as he knows it when he finds himself pushed out of his reality. Being lost about what to do, Richard goes looking for Door and finds out about London Below. I liked Richard though I found him to be a little slow on the uptake sometimes. But I think that Gaiman did a good job of having a readers see things through Richard's eyes. This book is told in the third person, and we get to follow a number of characters around. We have the Lady Door, the Marquis, and a woman called Hunter who's the best hunter in London Below. When Door goes on a quest to figure out who killed her family and why these four characters end up going on a series of mini-quests. I kind of like how Gaiman mixes history in this book along with some cultural significance to people who are from Britain The writing was good, but as I said above, the flow was off for me for a good portion of the book. The setting was awesome and I found myself interested in finding out more about those who live in London Below. The ending felt a bit anti-climatic to me. But all in all, this was a pretty good story. (  ) ObsidianBlue | Jul 1, 2020 | The audiobook was excellent! I would recommend this to people who liked Harry Potter and are now adults. Richard mysteriously becomes entrapped in London Below - another part of London which is dark and supernatural and, like the Wizarding World from Harry Potter, operates separately but intertwined with our world. ( ) HonestlyHolle | Jun 21, 2020 |
 Gaiman blends history and legend to fashion a traditional tale of good versus evil, replete with tarnished nobility, violence, wizardry, heroism, betrayal, monsters and even a fallen angel. The result is uneven. His conception of London Below is intriguing, but his characters are too obviously symbolic (Door, for example, possesses the ability to open anything). Also, the plot seems a patchwork quilt of stock fantasy images. Adapted from Gaiman's screenplay for a BBC series, this tale would work better with fewer words and more pictures.  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. Is contained inHas the adaptationIs expanded inInspiredHas as a supplement
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