Neverwhere [Paperback]

Neil Gaiman (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 359 pages
• Publisher: J'ai lu (November 1, 1998)
• Language: French
• ISBN-10: 2277260029
• ISBN-13: 978-2277260028
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,538,909 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars "...Immortal hate and courage never to submit or yield", December 7, 2006

By 

E. A. Lovitt "starmoth" (Gladwin, MI USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Neverwhere (Paperback)

Gaiman's horror is as chilling as it gets. In the midst of this fantasy-adventure tale, we must either avert our eyes or confront evil straight on in its multiple forms, one of them quite beautiful. "Neverwhere" is London-below, a dark, rat-infested series of tunnels, caverns, and time-bubbles, filled with sewage, mud, gore, and bits of historical London that never quite went away. The ragged people who live there have somehow slipped through the cracks of London-above. As always, the strong prey on the weak. Some of them use magic to control their ravenous gangs. Some of them do evil for the sake of Evil.

Readers who don't like fantasy because of the overworked magician/dragon theme should read "Neverwhere" anyway--just call it a work of magical reality. It certainly offers unusual perspectives of London. Somehow our 21st century London-above has become a city of blurred, boring citizens, leading safe, blank lives. London-below is peopled with real characters, both good and evil. Some of them die awful deaths. Some of them eat the heads off of live pigeons (an old carny trick, at least until the RSPCA got busy).

At least one of them comes back from the dead.

Gaiman's hero, Richard Mayhew is a sweet, over-grown boy, henpecked by his type-A fiancée in London-above. When he rescues a ragged waif who almost bleeds to death on his dinner jacket, he slips into London-below and ends up on a quest for a holy artifact that couldn't even exist in his wildest, above-London dreams. A pair of ghastly villains, the Burke and Hare of London-below pursue Richard and his brave companions as they work their way closer and closer to the Beast out of civilization's dark prehistory, and their confrontation with the ultimate Evil.

"Neverwhere"s ending is just right, its chief villain is satisfyingly and totally evil, and its hero finally bumbles into the right decision on how to live the rest of his life. This fantasy in a sense is the sequel to Milton's "Paradise Lost" although the ending is Gaiman's alone.