2007 Reading List - Neverwhere
Book Eleven
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Every city has a soul. This is something that Gaiman explored back in his Sandman days, in a rather creepy short story. Every city on earth has its own special qualities, something that makes it more than just the sum of its buildings, its weather and its people, much in the same way that a human being is more than a bunch of organs and fluids. London is not Moscow, which is not Tokyo, which is not New York.
And as with people, there are hidden sides to every city. Secret places, dark places of which most people are blissfully unaware and never see. Unless, like Richard Mahew, they are very, very unlucky.
Richard lives in London, and has everything he thinks he wants - a brilliant and beautiful fiancée, a good job, a nice flat in the city. He's not sure it's really what he wants, but it's better than what most people have, so it'll do. And his life is on a track towards nice mediocre comfort, when he stops to help a young homeless girl, bleeding and exhausted on the street. Her name is Door, and it is appropriate to her nature. Her family has been killed, there are evil, evil men looking for her, and now she has dragged an innocent man from his life in London Above to the utter alien existence that is London Below.
In London Below, there is another world. It's a place full of rat-speakers, barbarians, poets, bards and magic. Door has a quest - find out who killed her family and why. Actually, she knows who killed them - two avatars of murder and bloodletting, connoisseurs of death and dismemberment - Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. The real question is, as always, Why? Door didn't mean to bring Richard along with her, to destroy the normal life he'd had before, but there he was, and there was nothing she could do about it. All there is for him to do is to learn how to survive, and he's very nearly not so good at this....
This is a great book about a great idea, and it started with TV. The BBC wanted to do a kind of urban fantasy, and they asked Neil to do it, since he's good with this sort of thing. He came up with the idea of London Below, and the BBC loved it. Unfortunately, as with so many things creative, the structure of the project required him to make changes that he didn't really want to make. So things got cut and things got changed, but Neil comforted himself be saying, "It can always be put in the novel."
And so here it is. Just about everything that was in the TV show (I think - I haven't seen it in a while) plus the stuff he wanted to put in, but couldn't.
Enjoy the book.
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
Every city has a soul. This is something that Gaiman explored back in his Sandman days, in a rather creepy short story. Every city on earth has its own special qualities, something that makes it more than just the sum of its buildings, its weather and its people, much in the same way that a human being is more than a bunch of organs and fluids. London is not Moscow, which is not Tokyo, which is not New York.
And as with people, there are hidden sides to every city. Secret places, dark places of which most people are blissfully unaware and never see. Unless, like Richard Mahew, they are very, very unlucky.
Richard lives in London, and has everything he thinks he wants - a brilliant and beautiful fiancée, a good job, a nice flat in the city. He's not sure it's really what he wants, but it's better than what most people have, so it'll do. And his life is on a track towards nice mediocre comfort, when he stops to help a young homeless girl, bleeding and exhausted on the street. Her name is Door, and it is appropriate to her nature. Her family has been killed, there are evil, evil men looking for her, and now she has dragged an innocent man from his life in London Above to the utter alien existence that is London Below.
In London Below, there is another world. It's a place full of rat-speakers, barbarians, poets, bards and magic. Door has a quest - find out who killed her family and why. Actually, she knows who killed them - two avatars of murder and bloodletting, connoisseurs of death and dismemberment - Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar. The real question is, as always, Why? Door didn't mean to bring Richard along with her, to destroy the normal life he'd had before, but there he was, and there was nothing she could do about it. All there is for him to do is to learn how to survive, and he's very nearly not so good at this....
This is a great book about a great idea, and it started with TV. The BBC wanted to do a kind of urban fantasy, and they asked Neil to do it, since he's good with this sort of thing. He came up with the idea of London Below, and the BBC loved it. Unfortunately, as with so many things creative, the structure of the project required him to make changes that he didn't really want to make. So things got cut and things got changed, but Neil comforted himself be saying, "It can always be put in the novel."
And so here it is. Just about everything that was in the TV show (I think - I haven't seen it in a while) plus the stuff he wanted to put in, but couldn't.
Enjoy the book.