Book: Neverwhere
Author: Neil Gaiman
Pages: 370
I Read: The paperback pictured above
I Read it in: 6 hours (across 2 days)
Plot Summary: Under the streets of London there's a place most people could never even dream of. A city of monsters and saints, murderers and angels, knights in armour and pale girls in black velvet. This is the city of the people who have fallen between the cracks.
Richard Mayhew, a young businessman, is going to find out more than enough about this other London. A single act of kindness catapults him out of his workday existence and into a world that is at once eerily familiar and utterly bizarre. And a strange destiny awaits him down here, beneath his native city: Neverwhere.
What I Liked: Neverwhere is a fantastical, magical, adventurous romp through the fantastical realm of 'London Below'. It is a massively fun read and a rollicking adventure. There are very few authors as skilled as Neil Gaiman when it comes to constructing an alternate reality and a magical world. 'London Below' is a magical world- sort of an allusion to the marginalized people who slip through the cracks in society- inhabited by people who have left their lives in 'London Above'. It is a land with multiple 'tribes' with their own codes and rules. It can often be a blood-thirsty world filled with dangerous people and beasts.
So, it is in this magical world that straight-laced Richard Mayhew finds himself quite suddenly and unexpectedly when he decides to help a bleeding girl- Door. Door is an orphan who is being chased by two hired assassins, the same men who she suspects murdered her whole family a few years back. Along with Door, her ally- the Marquis de Carabas- and her bodyguard- Hunter, Richard finds himself meeting interesting people, seeing a totally different side to the London he knows and eventually discovers hidden strengths and aspects to himself that he didn't know about.
Neverwhere is such a fun, breezy read but it is also full of wisdom and you feel a well of sadness for all these dispossessed people, who now fight for their survival in this strange world.
The writing is brilliant. The characters are really love and have depth and you invest in them and their journey.
I could go on and on about this book, but saying too much will give the game away.
Read this book; you will love it!
Rating: 5/5
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