1996 • 480 pages
Ratings302
Average rating4.2
15
Ratings302
Average rating4.2
National Bestseller Selected as one of NPR’s Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books of All Time The #1 New York Times bestselling author’s ultimate edition of his wildly successful first novel featuring his “preferred text”—and including his new Neverwhere tale, “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back.” Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, 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. “A fantastic story that is both the stuff of dreams and nightmares” (San Diego Union-Tribune), Neil Gaiman’s first solo novel has become a touchstone of urban fantasy, and a perennial favorite of readers everywhere. “Delightful … inventively horrific.” —USA Today
Featured Series
1 primary book2 released booksLondon Below, The World of Neverwhere is a 3-book series with 2 primary works first released in 1996 with contributions by Neil Gaiman.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is an entertaining novel. It's your basic Gaiman - fascinating world with fantastic imagery, creepy villains, fast-paced plotting and a fair amount of chuckles. It's worth reading if you like dark-ish alternate reality fantasy.
I've been wanting to re-read this for years and the time finally felt right this October. I hesitate to say that Gaiman ‘builds' a compelling world for that phrase seems to imply some of the scaffolding is visible. It's not. The world Gaiman describes exists so wholly and so well painted that you never once think of it as something constructed but just, a place that is. It's a treat to be allowed a glimpse into it all. The story itself is actually a lot simpler than I remember, allowing the reader to drink in the world and characters and bob along with the story without having to concentrate too hard. Which is fine, but compared with the richness of the world, the plot itself does feel a little secondary. 5/5 for world, 5/5 for language, 4/5 for characters and 4/5 for plot, that's all I'm saying. Still an absolutely wonderful book. Oh, and Richard is a boring character, I feel the book would have been better without him and just wholly about London Below. I get that he has a function as muse and narrator and reflector of audience's perspective, but bleh he's just really naff.
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