By: Neil Gaiman Publisher: Harper Perennial Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Harper Perennial Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 400 Publication Date: September 01, 2003 Release Date: September 02, 2003
Amazon.com: Neverwhere's protagonist, Richard Mayhew, learns the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished. He ceases to exist in the ordinary world of London Above, and joins a quest through the dark and dangerous London Below, a shadow city of lost and forgotten people, places, and times. His companions are Door, who is trying to find out who hired the assassins who murdered her family and why; the Marquis of Carabas, a trickster who trades services for very big favors; and Hunter, a mysterious lady who guards bodies and hunts only the biggest game. London Below is a wonderfully realized shadow world, and the story plunges through it like an express passing local stations, with plenty of action and a satisfying conclusion. The story is reminiscent of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but Neil Gaiman's humor is much darker and his images sometimes truly horrific. Puns and allusions to everything from Paradise Lost to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz abound, but you can enjoy the book without getting all of them. Gaiman is definitely not just for graphic-novel fans anymore. --Nona Vero
Product Description:
Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinarylife, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk. His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them. And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.
Download Description: "Special e-book feature: contains three stories - ""Fifteen Painted Cards From a Vampire Tarot""; ""Eaten""; ""Apple"" - not available in print edition. The distinctive storytelling genius of Neil Gaiman has been acclaimed by writers as diverse as Norman Mailer and Stephen King. Now in this new collection of stories--several of which have never before appeared in print and more than half that have never been collected--that will dazzle the senses and haunt the imagination. Miraculous inventions and unforgettable characters inhabit these pages: an elderly widow who finds the Holy Grail in a second-hand store...a frightened little boy who bargains for his life with a troll living under a bridge by the railroad tracks...a stray cat who battles nightly against a recurring evil that threatens his unsuspecting adoptive family. In these stories, Gaiman displays the power, wit, insight and outrageous originality that has made him one of the most unique literary artists of our day."
Swashbuckling story with fanciful and alluring language Gaiman has an amazing talent for weaving a beautiful story with the most amazing and alluring descriptions. His words leave vivid impressions in your mind in the most unusual and melodic way.
London Below.....and then some Incredible ride indeed. Neil Gaiman did it again. Just heard that they want to make a movie about Neverwhere. I saw the BBC adaptation and it was somehow dissapointing. Then again, this review is about the book and make no mistake it will take you London Below in a blink of an eye. At some point you could almost feel claustrophobic while your mind follows Richar, Door and the Marquis thru the endless passages. Great book indeed.
Brash, charming, funny and edgy A review by Hank Wagner, co-author (with Christopher Golden and Stephen R. Bissette) of the upcoming Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman, due out from St. Martins in October 2008:
Richard Mayhew has resided in London for three years, and, on the whole, has found it an enjoyable place to live. After all, he has good friends, a decent job, and Jessica, his lovely fiancée. One evening, on his way to a formal dinner he is not especially eager to attend, a young woman collapses on the sidewalk in front of the couple. Apparently homeless, the woman is bleeding from deep cuts on her arm and shoulder. Ignoring Jessica's pointed suggestions, he refrains from calling the police. Instead, he carries the woman to his apartment, leaving his irate fiancée to attend the dinner without him.
The young woman, who goes by the unlikely name of Door, is the sole survivor of a brutal attack on her family, perpetrated by Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, two wicked creatures who take pleasure in inflicting pain and death. Richard helps Door locate a friend, the Marquis de Carabas, who takes her from the apartment before Croup and Vandemar can find her there. Richard is puzzled by these events, but, as the hours pass, they seem less and less real, more like a fantasy he concocted to create excitement in his life.
He returns to work the next day to find that no one notices or acknowledges him. Richard becomes a non-entity, invisible to all but the closest scrutiny--no one, not even his fiancée or best friend, recognizes him. His erasure is so complete he ends up unemployed and homeless. Tracing this dilemma to his encounter with Door, Richard seeks her out, eventually discovering the world that exists under the streets of London, a world inhabited by such colorful personages as the Lord Rat-speaker, a female assassin called Hunter, and a fallen angel named Islington. Richard assists Door in her search for the man who ordered her family killed, and eventually discovers the terrible secrets behind their deaths, secrets that threaten the very existence of London Below.
Brash, charming, funny, and edgy, Neverwhere is Gaiman's novelization of the television series that he wrote for the BBC in the early nineties, his chance, as he has stated, to do things on the page that he wasn't allowed to do on the small screen, expanding on his intriguing concept of a world that exists beneath our own. Featuring covert social commentary, unforgettable characters, a unique setting, sudden violence, heroism and villainy, Neverwhere in its final literary form (the US version is significantly different than and far superior to its English predecessor, featuring almost 10,000 words not in its previous incarnation) is yet another of Gaiman's modern classics, far surpassing the television series that provided its origin, and spawning a comic book adaptation and discussion of a future feature film version.
Go on a quest to London Below and see a whole different world It's a novel about an ordinary guy trying do his best with an ordinary life but he wants more out of it even though he himself doesn't know it yet. He helps a girl who comes to his apartment in the dead of night even though he knows that he probably shouldn't get involved.
Then strange things start to happen as he loses his touch with "reality" a new London that he did not know exist is opened up to him. Normally this would make for a very boring book but it just so happens that the girl he rescued is the last of a family of Guardians and not only does he have to enlist aid for her they also have to dodge the efforts of two great comical villains.
Overall-The plot would be nothing special except for the ability of Neil Gaiman to really describe it to us and give it a life of it's own everyone has a unique voice from Richard Mayhew to the Ratspeaker and as always my poor efforts at a review cannot really describe how great this book is.
Good but thin in spots This was not the allegorical novel I thought it would be. It was more in the fantasy genre, a Harry Potter for adults. Once I realized that and just sat back to enjoy it as such, it was a good read. I'd actually read a sequel if one ever presented itself. Some of the character and world development is a bit thin for fantasy, though. I'd like Gaiman to spend some more time on this dark world and its inhabitants.
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