Neverwhere

I wasn't even going to write this post, as I didn't think it was going to be all that interesting to any of my three readers. But my brain thought otherwise and proceeded to dictate it to me at 2 AM. If I don't write this post, who knows what sort of retribution it will take out on my hide tonight.

I wasn't into comic books as a kid. Superheroes seemed lame. And the costumes were totally gay. The comic books themselves were poorly inked and the paper was the inspiration for two-ply toilet paper.

All that changed in college. I had a roommate one year who was into two things: sports and comic books. The former was totally believable as he was 6' 2" and anything but geeky, but the latter surprised me. Each week he'd take a portion of his stipend and spend it on comic books, while I was spending my Carrier Dome employee income on cheap vodka to wash away the pain of Thermodynamics and Equilibrium Staged Separations.

He agreed with me that the quality of comic books was seriously lacking in the 70's but that they were enjoying a resurgence. This was the late 80's. He had me read The Watchmen and Frank Miller's treatise of Batman in The Dark Knight and other works. I had to agree with him. These "graphic novels" were a far cry from the comic books of my youth. The stories told within were compelling. There was actually a writer involved that had taken the time to construct a plot and offer real characters. And it was evident to me that the illustrators were laboring to create art.

Fast forward to this decade. As a Christmas present one year, my wife decides to pick me up the first two volumes of The Sandman. She's certain that it would appeal to me.

And she was right. I've read 6 volumes now, and numbers 7 & 8 are awaiting me. I hope to get the remaining three this year.

Maybe some of you out there have already read Neil Gaiman's treatise of The Sandman. It is the work that launched his career as a writer. While I'd love to rattle on about this work, enough has been said already about how awesome it is. This post isn't about Sandman, it's about Gaiman's first novel: Neverwhere.

Maybe it's just me but Neverwhere doesn't seem to have the mind share that his later novels American Gods and Anansi Boys have. It's not to say that the novel wasn't good. I just think that his career hadn't snowballed enough by 1997, when the book came out, that people outside of his fan base paid much attention to it. After all, Gaiman was a comic book writer, not a novelist, and this was his first.

I stumbled upon Neverwhere in a local used book store last year. I hadn't heard of it either, nor had I ever seen it in any of the chain bookstores. Anyway, I decided to pick it up, along with a couple other books, of which another will be reviewed here later.

Yes, Gaiman can write novels. If you want to read a short synopsis of the story, read this and come back. Not having the artists from his Sandman days here to flesh out the scenery, Gaiman does it for us. His words paint London Below as a dark, damp, brooding place of fallen majesty. I half expected the Sandman himself to show up as the imagery conjured here mirrored that of the Dream King's universe. The characters are just as real with their flaws as those that we met in the Sandman series. And the tale that Gaiman weaves is just as suspenseful and imaginative.

My only complaint would be that it seemed to take just a little too long for the main character, Richard Mayhew, to get it. Perhaps that was Gaiman's intention. Maybe he wanted us to yell at Richard, "C'mon man! Don't you get it yet?!" I won't say he was annoying, but he was close to it a few times.

I believe that the story attempts to answer two questions: Can you really go home? If so, would you really want to?

All in all, a really good modern, urban fantasy. Definitely worth the read if you're a Sandman or Gaiman fan or if you're into stories with elements of suspense, horror (not gore), and modern fantasy (no elves).

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DED