Neverwhere

Rating:
Summary: Fast, exciting read for sci-fi and fantasy lovers
Review: This book was great! Gaiman's writing style lends itself to quick and easy reading pleasure. The story is interesting and compels you to continue reading. If you like gothic adventures then this book is for you.

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Summary: There *are* shepherds in Shepher's Bush . . .
Review: Richard Mayhew, a young Scot recently moved to London, was only doing what he thought was right when he picked up literally off the street, bruised and bloody and frightened, and took her home. But his good deed gets him sucked down into London Below, which is not a nice place. That's where people live who have fallen through the cracks of society, and some of them have been down there for centuries, moving through the sewers, living in abandoned Underground stations, doing business at the Floating Market, and generally being invisible to London Above. The girl, whose name is Door, is an Opener, like all her family -- but all of them, except Door, were killed by Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, as viciously evil a pair as you'll ever find Above or Below. Door is looking for an explanation, and maybe vengenance, with the assistance of Hunter, her bodyguard, and the thoroughly dodgy Marquis de Carabas, and with Richard (who finds he also has ceased to exist in the upper world) tagging along simply because he has no choice. Gaiman is a master of odd and very original characters and slightly off-center dialogue, and his prose is a delight to read.

Rating:
Summary: A Hero with Yet a Another Face
Review: Of course, Neil Gaiman's first novel has been compared to "Alice in Wonderland" and his own Sandman comic series, but what this story most embodies is a Campbellian Hero's Mythic journey. This includes almost every element of Campbell's journey: a call to adventure, threshold crossing, the tests (complete with helpers), transfiguration, and return to the world. Gaiman's also touches on these themes in his later work "American Gods"(and probably better there than "Neverwhere") and I think, no one is writing mythological stories as good as Gaiman right now. Gaiman manages to write about these themes with a wry sense of humour that never detracts from the importance of the stories he tells. This novel gets 4 stars instead of 5 only because I read "American Gods" first and I'm rating them relative to each other.

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Summary: Comings and goings in the shadows below our sated experience
Review: Imagine the movie "Nowhere" (directed by Gregg Araki, 1997) relocated from Huntington Beach to the platforms of the London underground. Now imagine the movie's characters and their partying concerns aged by ten years and the role of the alien taken over by a fallen angel. Keep in mind the movie's tightly framed close-ups, which force the viewer to see pulsing realities that lie just a shadow below our sated experience. Your result could be the novel "Neverwhere," which is less brash than the movie but more goth. Whether you find the movie or the novel more affecting depends on whether it's aliens or fallen angels that you avoid more.

Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: Wow! This is one of the best books I've ever read! Once you start it you can't stop till you get to the end, and then you just want to read it again, and again, and again...
Imagine to your self London, and then imagine it's subway and then imagine a whole new world down there with different customs and people and even animals. And imagine one man who acidentlly gets into this world, this is what the book is about and everybody who loves fantasy should read it.

Rating:
Summary: Think the subway is scary?
Review: Neil Gaiman's NEVERWHERE is a thrilling look at what life might be like thriving under the streets of London. His hapless hero is stuck in a boring job, pushed around by a maneuvering girlfriend and well on his way to a do-nothing life when he makes a decision to help a homeless girl. Then, he's whooshed off into another, subterranean world.
It's a pretty nasty place, filled with ruthless criminals, dripping dirty water, sewer rats and all the rest. But it's also a world in which compassion and soul are worthy traits.
Gaiman does a lovely job of creating Dickensian characters, which further display the lackluster quality of current London life.
The ending is a tease, but still satisfying in its own way. NEVERWHERE is a wonderful prelude to Gaiman's better work, AMERICAN GODS.

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Summary: Gaiman finds and claims a new rabbit hole
Review: Gaiman's Neverwhere is a new type of Wonderland adventure. Contemporary in both setting and attitude, the tale runs under the city of London, sometimes surfacing in its streets and buildings, in a most dangerous and dark way. Comparison with Alice and her adventures seems inevitable.

As with many protagonists in such stories, Richard Mayhew moves from the world he knows to one as alien as another planet, quite by accident. As Twain said, "No good deed goes unpunished." And Richard is severely punished when he loses identity and place. His only choice is to escape into the maze of this other world in hopes of finding himself and the world in which he was comfortable.

The characters are vivid and the reader either hates or loves them. With the exception of Richard. Considering what has happened to him, it is not surprising that he would let others control his actions. However, a more proactive character might strengthen our attachment to him. But he is neither hero nor anti-hero. The world Gaiman has created under the very feet of Londoners is fascinating, following its own rules of behavior and its own level of violence and revenge. There is magic there, both dark and light. A world in which we would only want to spend a short time.

Readers who enjoy this tale might also enjoy the bizarre horror novels of Chet Williamson, and of course, the Adventures in Wonderland.

Rating:
Summary: My First Neil Gaiman Book And, So Far, My Favorite
Review: Even though I read "Neverwhere" several years ago (this was my first Gaiman book), I decided to re-read it to refresh my memory, so I could write this review. Even after all this time, this is still my favorite book by Neil Gaiman. I even lent it to my sister beforehand, and she finished it off in one day, which was an amazing feat since it took me considerably longer to finish (and I'm usually a faster reader), and she's relatively picky about what she reads. (She gives this book high marks too.)

Now on to the plot. (Skip the next two paragraphs if you'd rather not know what this book is about. Don't worry; I've tried to keep all spoilers as to how it ends out.)

"Neverwhere," which is Gaiman's first solo novel (he's co-written a few others, like "Good Omens" with Terry Pratchett, a novel that has considerable similarities to this one), is about Richard Mayhew, a Londoner who saves a wounded young woman (Door) who has somehow stumbled into London Above (the world we live in). She is from London Below, an underground world that has barely changed for hundreds of years.

After their meeting, Richard's identity is unexplainably lost--or rather, he becomes somewhat of a ghost. Therefore he must enter London Below and find a way to get his life back, by joining up with Door and her traveling companions--her bodyguard: the infamous Hunter, and the shady marquis de Carabas--who are in an avenging quest to find out who murdered Door's family. Along the way, Richard encounters a colony of subterranean rat-speakers, visits a "moving" market, boards a subway train containing a medieval court, and even has the pleasure of meeting a real live angel ("Good Omens" all over again).

"Neverwhere" is a delightfully witty and humorous dark fantasy, though not dark or somber enough to be considered a horror novel, in my opinion. What makes this book so hard to put down--besides the wit and humor--is its fast pace (even though it is 370 pages) and the strikingly well-developed characters, like the protagonist (Richard), who is my favorite in here, though the two assassins are a high second. This is definitely a must-read if you're into fantasies. Like Stephen King's "It", this book will have you glancing down sewer drains while you're walking and wondering what's below your feet.

Rating:
Summary: Dislike your name? Be thankful it's not "Door."
Review: Such a dark fantasy, complete with killer angels, life-sucking velvets (don't ask), urban-legend "crocodiles in the sewers" monsters, and lycantropic assasins, wouldn't usually be my thing. In addition, Gaiman's often-graphic descriptions of the London Below and its grimy inhabitants are enough to turn one's stomach. Still, the book kept me absolutely hooked while I wolfed it down.

Basically, the premise of the story is that there is a London Above and London Below. And that ostensibly, there is Paris Above, Moscow Above, New York Above, and then, there are their "below" counterparts. And if you ever cross into the "below," you can say bye-bye to your normal life. You become... well, not exactly invisible, but so utterly insignificant in your world, so absolutely forgettable, that your family will soon forget you've ever existed... and then, you'll have no options but to go back to the London Below. And you don't want to do that. It's ugly. It's dirty. It's wet. There are horrid creatures of all sorts, including two assassins that are strange man-beasts, one a fox, one a wolf, and that have burned Troy, tortured a medieval convent-ful of nuns to painful death and killed two "accredited gods." And somewhere, there is the Beast, which reminded me of the horrid creature in Le Pacte de Loup, but was, basically, a slightly glorified urban legend. I mean, haven't you heard about them alligators in the sewers? The book actually states, at one point, the various monsters under different cities. The London Below, according to a woman-bravo (a bodyguard) named Hunter, has an overgrown (hey, it's been feeding on sewage since 17th century), mean, nasty... but you'll know when you get there.

This is the world into which a perfectly normal, rational, boring man by the name of Richard Mayhew is catapulted when he helps a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. The girl's name is Door (yes, like the one you open--don't ask). By the end of the book, the incongruity of that name will have long stopped bothering you...

The book is fascinating, not only for the story itself, which is old in some respects (after all, Gaiman is not the first to suggest the idea of a parallel world) and novel in other, but also, in the clever language, dark (sometimes midnight-dark) humor and excellent literary references. For instance, the big, black scoundrel of a guide that the main characters, Richard and Door, use for navigation around the London Below, is named Marquis de Carabas. Everything about him is oddly reminiscent of a cat, bringing to mind Mikhail Bulgakov's odd black talking cat Behemoth from the great Master & Margarita. Well! It took me a day or so to realize that Marquis de Carabas was actually the name the clever Puss-in-the-Boots from the old Pierrot fairy-tale picked for his poor master. There are subtle references to Milton (getting them will make you feel cool about yourself, and not getting them will not spoil your enjoyment of the book) and not-so-subtle ones to the Wizard of Oz (you'll definitely get those!).

The book will prove particularly interesting to anyone familiar with London and especially, the London uneground. Gaiman's wild imagination enlivens the names of the old Tube stations: there is an Earl in Earl's Court (an actual decrepit old man, who has his own court, complete with a court fool; his whole entourage is feeding on Cadbury bars and Coca-Cola out of the station vending machines), a Raven in Ravenscourt, the Knightsbridge is actually Night's Bridge--a Bridge covered with eternal, threatening, dangerous darkness. And Angel Islington is an angel named Islington. :) And the Floating Market is held at Harrod's. :)

I highly recommend this to anyone with the taste for an unusual adventure, dark humour, and spell-binding story.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I wish there were more books like this one! The first book I've read in a while that I wanted to start again as soon as i was finished.