Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman

A world beneath our feet, and beneath our notice…

Neverwhere is a book that I read a little sceptically. I wasn’t really to sure of how this would or could compare to Sandman, a comic series with stunning visual and writing power. This would come to be the first foray for Neil Gaiman into full length novel writing, and it’s a powerful statement to make, not only is it a grand leap from what he has done previously, but it is also Gaiman through and through.

The main protagonist Richard Mayhew is really quite a normal and boring average guy; we get at the start of the book a description of his life, and a period when he moves down into London to work and live. This way of life all drastically changes when Richard decides to aid a fairly nondescript person injured in the street, disregarding the ire of his partner he takes the girl, who is called Door, back to his flat to aid her injuries, after this nothing is the same got him.

Richard falls into London below, a mirror world of the London above, where we would associate the latter with normality, in the former, myth and darkness swirl around, to warp everything into something fantastical and different. London below can only be reached by falling through cracks that appear in the normal life.

Gaiman superbly mixes up everything into his streamlined prose, as dark horror, brushes side by side with pure fantasy; there is always some from of wit or humour that makes light of these. This constant is often in the from of Richard, and his constant questioning of places and people ‘downstairs’ if you will, his mistakes and assumptions are ones which the reader will make, until Gaiman twists the norm to suit his own darker London, one in which dark fantasy and urban myth are ever present.

The story is an effortless one, after rescuing Door Richard becomes embroiled in events that see him fade out of his old life, and sets him in a quest to find the people responsible for the death of Door’s family. A perfect set of villains are set against them, Vandermar and Croup embody random torture with a pleasant demeanour, which are always set of by equally random acts of grotesqueness.

Though this is also in comic format as well, the book Neverwhere still has a sweeping imaginative presence that is an utter delight to read.

Neverwhere - 10/10