Neverwhere
Neil Gaiman
7.30.2006
The first book I read by Gaiman was a collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. Actually a pretty funny read, although the person who loaned it to me seemed to think it was the best book ever written. This was probably back in 2000. I laughed at a couple of the more auspicious stances (One of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, is responsible for the stick-thin models we see constantly…) but didn’t think much past this.
Last week I had a lot of travel scheduled. So when I was wandering through the used book store for a cheap read to get me through a grueling two days of flights, I picked this up. The cover is horrible. Remember all the really pseudo-eerie V.C. Andrews novels with holes in the cover and other silly crap like that? This has the same patina of menace- a big hole cut out in the front cover. It shows a tunnel, with torches burning every so often.
Anyway, on to the content. It’s … not bad. Not great, but not bad either. The concept is fun- there is an entire city underneath London. Another entire culture existing concurrently with our own. And of course, as with most successful culture-within-a-culture stories: Magics. Loads of em.
Our hero is invariably sucked into this other culture (like in all stories, who’d go willingly?) and then has to learn about all the new and different subcultures within his new world. There’s a girl, although no romantic scenes, thank goodness. At the end, we’ve all learned a powerful lesson about what to do when you’re inadvertently sucked into a completely different culture.
So. If you’re looking for a book to read that is not bad, you can read this one. It’s … not bad.
Neil Gaiman
7.30.2006
The first book I read by Gaiman was a collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens. Actually a pretty funny read, although the person who loaned it to me seemed to think it was the best book ever written. This was probably back in 2000. I laughed at a couple of the more auspicious stances (One of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Famine, is responsible for the stick-thin models we see constantly…) but didn’t think much past this.
Last week I had a lot of travel scheduled. So when I was wandering through the used book store for a cheap read to get me through a grueling two days of flights, I picked this up. The cover is horrible. Remember all the really pseudo-eerie V.C. Andrews novels with holes in the cover and other silly crap like that? This has the same patina of menace- a big hole cut out in the front cover. It shows a tunnel, with torches burning every so often.
Anyway, on to the content. It’s … not bad. Not great, but not bad either. The concept is fun- there is an entire city underneath London. Another entire culture existing concurrently with our own. And of course, as with most successful culture-within-a-culture stories: Magics. Loads of em.
Our hero is invariably sucked into this other culture (like in all stories, who’d go willingly?) and then has to learn about all the new and different subcultures within his new world. There’s a girl, although no romantic scenes, thank goodness. At the end, we’ve all learned a powerful lesson about what to do when you’re inadvertently sucked into a completely different culture.
So. If you’re looking for a book to read that is not bad, you can read this one. It’s … not bad.
