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Carly's Reviews > Neverwhere
Neverwhere (London Below, #1)
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Carly's review
bookshelves: fairy-tale, fantasy, urban-fantasy, worldbuilding, world-within-world, muf, masquerade-world, favorites
Jun 23, 2012
bookshelves: fairy-tale, fantasy, urban-fantasy, worldbuilding, world-within-world, muf, masquerade-world, favorites
**edited 12/04/13
Richard is an ordinary man with an ordinary past and an ordinary life, a man who takes comfort in the mundane and is content to be ordered about by his domineering fiancée. But when a terrified and injured girl stumbles into his path, Richard makes what might be his first independent decision, his first resistance against the ordinary flow of his life: he makes the choice to rescue and protect this unknown girl. Immediately, his reality begins to shatter, and in the cracks between the mundanity of his past life, he begins to discover the peculiar world of London Below. Catapulted into strangeness, Richard begins a quest into the magical and often grotesque environs of London Below to find the girl who shattered his peace and to regain his old life.
Neverwhere is an exploration of the fantastic, an adventure, an escape into the creative and bizarre and dangerous, and, perhaps above all, the story of a man discovering himself.
...And that's all I'm going to post here. The rest of my (rather verbose) review is posted over here at Booklikes.
Why? Because I disapprove of GoodReads' new policy of censorship, I will no longer post reviews here.
Richard is an ordinary man with an ordinary past and an ordinary life, a man who takes comfort in the mundane and is content to be ordered about by his domineering fiancée. But when a terrified and injured girl stumbles into his path, Richard makes what might be his first independent decision, his first resistance against the ordinary flow of his life: he makes the choice to rescue and protect this unknown girl. Immediately, his reality begins to shatter, and in the cracks between the mundanity of his past life, he begins to discover the peculiar world of London Below. Catapulted into strangeness, Richard begins a quest into the magical and often grotesque environs of London Below to find the girl who shattered his peace and to regain his old life.
Neverwhere is an exploration of the fantastic, an adventure, an escape into the creative and bizarre and dangerous, and, perhaps above all, the story of a man discovering himself.
...And that's all I'm going to post here. The rest of my (rather verbose) review is posted over here at Booklikes.
Why? Because I disapprove of GoodReads' new policy of censorship, I will no longer post reviews here.
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Reading Progress
June 23, 2012
– Shelved
March 16, 2013
–
Started Reading
March 16, 2013
–
10.0%
"Ah, lyrical writing. I missed you so much.
Also, London must be a terrifically magic city. 5/5 of the British UFs I have read occur there."
Also, London must be a terrifically magic city. 5/5 of the British UFs I have read occur there."
Finished Reading
March 19, 2013
–
20.0%
""'Oh. Yes, sir. Yes, indeed. And might I say how your telephonic confabulation brightens up and cheers our otherwise dreary and uneventful days?' Another pause. 'Of course I'll stop toadying and crawling. Delighted to. An honor.'"
There is something so appealing about the tall/silent/superviolent + short/fat/loquacious/unctuous henchman duo...no wonder they are stock casting in every Disney movie."
There is something so appealing about the tall/silent/superviolent + short/fat/loquacious/unctuous henchman duo...no wonder they are stock casting in every Disney movie."
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
fairy-tale
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
fantasy
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
worldbuilding
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
urban-fantasy
March 22, 2013
– Shelved as:
world-within-world
March 22, 2013
–
100.0%
""'Oh. Yes, sir. Yes, indeed. And might I say how your telephonic confabulation brightens up and cheers our otherwise dreary and uneventful days?' Another pause. 'Of course I'll stop toadying and crawling. Delighted to. An honor.'"
There is something so appealing about the tall/silent/superviolent + short/fat/loquacious/unctuous henchman duo...no wonder they are stock casting in every Disney movie."
There is something so appealing about the tall/silent/superviolent + short/fat/loquacious/unctuous henchman duo...no wonder they are stock casting in every Disney movie."
March 22, 2013
–
100.0%
June 16, 2013
– Shelved as:
muf
June 27, 2013
– Shelved as:
masquerade-world
August 10, 2013
– Shelved as:
favorites
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[deleted user]
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Mar 18, 2013 04:40AM
It is a magical city!!
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Apparently so... it is interesting, though. This makes the 6th UF I've read that takes place in England, and 6/6 are London. But I've read even more US ones, and they're spread out all over the place (highest count is, strangely, 3 in Seattle.) Does London's affinity for magic detract from other potential sites? Why not Liverpool or Manchester or maybe somewhere close to the Cotswolds?
Because London is the biggest, most famous and arguably the most interesting city in the UK? Besides, England is about the size of a USA state, and if you think about it from that point of view, it's not that weird most books take place in London.
Nah, I don't buy that. If you think of the richness of history, which is what really matters in a town where you're setting a UF, then practically every city in the UK beats any US city hands-down. And if prominence was the issue, then it's difficult to explain the choices for UF ones. NYC? Sure. LA? Sure, that's the haunt of most of the classic hardboiled detectives. Chicago? Uhh..OK, I guess there's a mob history there. But Seattle? Boston? Kansas City? Tucson? San Francisco? Atlanta? Columbus? These aren't famous or necessarily interesting, but all are home to one or more UF series.Certainly Edinburgh, Oxford, Cardiff, or Dublin are at least as interesting...especially for anyone tying Celtic mythos into their stories...
What is indeed weird is that while US authors try to avoid setting their UF story into the same city another author has before them, UK authors don't seem to mind sharing London...
