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| Neverwhere: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $5.31
You Save: $8.64 (62%)
New (30) Used (31) from $5.31
Avg. Customer Rating:  570 reviews
Sales Rank: 4757
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0060557818
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780060557812
ASIN: 0060557818
Publication Date: September 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: one small tear in back cover. Heavytail carefully hand cleans and reinspects each and every item we ship. Our quality control process insures items to be in the condition described or better. Heavytail is determined to earn your repeat business through old fashioned customer service. We love international orders.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The Contrast Effect September 3, 2004
16 out of 38 found this review helpful
A good friend of mine talks a lot about the contrast effect, essentially how our expectations affect our perceptions. I think that, when it comes to this book, I'm a victim of the contrast effect.
I had seen a production of Gaiman's work (his episode of Babylon 5) that I thought was very good. I had had Neverwhere described to me, and it sounded like adult drama, so I bought the book and settled in for a good read, something on the order of (I was hoping) Clive Barker.
What I got was more like a cross between The Wizard of OZ and a D&D game. There's an endless succession of quests (which, on the whole, are pretty pointless as far as the reader is concerned), and a bunch of characters who seem pretty juvenile and one-sided, and who do not grow or change much during the course of the story (although the ending is meant to lead us to believe that the lead character has chosen a life of adventure rather than a boring office job). Where I had been hoping for some lyrical metaphors, I got the weakest descriptions possible.
Does this make it bad? Hard to say. Based on my expectations, I was severely disappointed, but someone looking for a young adult novel might think it was great.
Neverwhere... goes NOwhere July 1, 2006
15 out of 31 found this review helpful
Based on what I've heard about this author and the interesting premise for this tale, I was greatly disappointed. Although I was drawn in at the beginning, I soon realized that this was just an endless series of underground characters engaging in violent acts against each other while the plot meanders along passageways with little explanation for events and an ultimately disappointing conclusion. I may give Mr. Gaiman another try, but based on this first taste it will be a while before I bother. This was even suggested to me as a possible young adult novel, but I would suggest parents steer clear unless your student is a high schooler or older. I won't be surprised if others rank this review as "not helpful" because they disagree, but please respect an alternative opinion. I am an open-minded, avid reader of a wide variety of genres, so I thought it only fair to include an honest review from a different perspective. Hope it helps wavering customers.
 begging for a sequel... July 5, 2006
15 out of 15 found this review helpful
From the moment when we meet Richard Mayhew and Door, we can dive into the mysterious world of Neil Gaiman's imagination in "Neverwhere".
"Neverwhere" means the underground London, where the time and space are totally different than in the "London above" (the name the inhabitants of the "below" use when talking about the city), where the contemporary laws and traditions don't work, wkere rats speak and strange inhuman creatures mingle with outcasts and aristocracy, where people have supernatural powers and special abilities, but learning that is not enough to live there, because not everything is as it seems.
Richard's life changes completely after he meets a wounded girl (Door) and helps her. The next morning he is invisible, his job disappears, his flat is rented to someone else and he has no other choice but to look for Door and therefore go deeper (literally!) into her world, helping her solve the mystery and avenge the murder of her family, participating in the events he would never dream of before.
This is just a beginning of a great journey and a first-class fantasy, although I am not even sure if "fantasy" is a good word for this novel, because Gaiman created an entirely new quality, which may not be so easily classified. His universe is so intriguing that when the book ends, there is nothing but the wish for more...
Gaiman's ability to produce something absolutely new, painting in reader's mind original cityscapes and the surprising adventures of the characters, who are also great and, although usually sketched in a few words, impressively individual and unique (Door, Richard, Marquis de Carabas, the guard Hunter, Angel Islington, the eternal mercenaries Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar), is worth mentioning. It is also worth mentioning that the London Tube, its history and map, play a vital part in the story (as well as the roofs). I was only surprised by one obvious error (unless I don't know something), where the Black Friar "wore the black robes of a Dominican monk". ????. Dominican monks wear white robes, don't they? But never mind, the book is excellent and even if there were more mistakes of such sort, they do not spoil its beauty. The British movie, although it has all the faults of the film done after the very good book and forcing the director's vision instead of the reader's imagined one, being additionally a rather low-budget production, is nevertheless a good screening and can be recommended as well.
Gaiman's at a loss without illustrators. June 22, 1999
14 out of 30 found this review helpful
I always assumed Sandman owed it's greatness to Gaiman's writing, and logically assumed his novel would be similarly compelling. Not so! His editor should find a new line of work...there are several cringingly awful sentences. I can ignore that sort of thing if the story is suspenseful, but Gaiman failed me there too. On the whole it reads like something a young boy might write in junior high. Every character was utterly two dimensional. In fact, the only two that were even remotely interesting were the villains, who were comfortably evil and somewhat amusing. The main characters were just abysmal...Richard was beyond foolish, and Door had no substance beyond a great name and predictably "pixie-ish" looks. That said, I'm sure Neverwhere would make a great graphic novel. It reads a bit like a hastily conceived storyboard, so perhaps Gaiman was unable to step outside of that mindset. (For an excellent graphic novel, try Cages by Dave McKean.) Verdict: Gaiman is, like Richard, fully "out of his depth."
 Entertaining enough, but could have been much better November 4, 2004
14 out of 23 found this review helpful
I leapt into this book on the recommendation of a friend, having never read anything by Neil Gaiman. Being a pretty big fan of sci-fi/cyberpunk, the premise sounded right up my alley, and it started out rather well. Even 100 pages in I was ripping through the book, smiling and intrigued, but soon after that the disappointment began to settle around me like a legendary London fog...
POSSIBLE SPOILERS!
With alternate reality books like these, world-building is key. For readers new to the genre, the vast kingdom of 'London below', (essentially a murky, underground, quasi-real parallel to the regular London)in which much of the events chronicled in 'Neverwhere' take place, might seem brilliant. The thing is, as an idea, it had real potential, but FAR too much was left unexplained. For example, at one point during his adventures, the protagonist, Richard, stops asking questions--questions on which I was also completely hung up--as he begins to accept the fact that no one's going to give him much in the way of a direct answer. For some reason, Gaiman decided to put the reader in the exact same boat, and the result was extreme dissatisfaction, at least for me. In this way, I can see why the book is being compared to the classic children's story 'Alice in Wonderland', as that was the problem with a lot of alternate world fairytales as well: the stories were great, but they were told with nary a modicum of concern for rhyme or reason. We accepted this as kids--face it, we weren't as smart back then--but adults with the same lust for the fantastical start to demand more solid explanations for things, more detailed descriptions, more questions answered, and thus spawned the world-building found in classics of science fiction and fantasy. (Dune, anyone?)
This is not to say that everything in science fiction and fantasy must make perfect sense according to our natural laws and facts about our own universe we believe to be true. Many great stories break all the rules, and that's the second task for the author--to build a given world, and then construct events in such a way that they make sense within the context of this world. The 'London below' of 'Neverwhere' did have rules, but they simply were not developed enough. The rules and events that took place within the world of 'London below' governed by these rules appeared to be completely arbitrary--for instance:
1. Market truce
2. Half-lives of Iliaster & Lear (WHY? HOW?)
3. Specialized abilities (Rat-speakers, Door, Croup & Vandemar)
4. Darkness on the bridge????
5. Mechanism that brought the marquis de Cabaras back to life
6. Richard AND Jessica's ability to see Door
7. Mechanism that brought Richard into London below (at least we were told how he got back!!)
8. Divisions of 'London below'--why was it organized into baronies & fiefdoms?
9. Immortality of several characters, but not all?
10. RICHARD'S ORDEAL!!! To some it might have seemed self-explanatory, but it wasn't. It was a half-baked idea at best, waiting to be cultivated into a magnificent turning point in Richard's journey. Nothing about the ordeal or why on earth Richard got through it made any sense. That goes for the rest of his triumphs: why was HE so special??
Etcetera!
Another reader equated this book with the phrase "rough draft." I must say, I agree! As a first copy, this novel has thrilling potential. Yet, as it stands, it's forgettable, simplistic and lazy.
This brings me to the main characters--same thing. It's pure laziness on the part of the author, but as far as I'm concerned, I doubt any of them will leave a lasting impression on me. I hate to sound trite, but nice as Richard and Door were, they appeared one-dimensional, simple-minded, and jumbled. How on earth did Richard get over Jessica so easily? Any rational person in his situation would have plunged into an existential panic. Instead he sort of shuffles along, waiting to be told what to do next.
In conclusion: not a horrible way to spend a couple days, but I wouldn't recommend this book to fans of genre-fiction. Otherwise, I CAN see why it went over so well with the general population, but to those who liked it for the world: IT GETS WAY BETTER THAN THIS! (Just off the top of my head, try Dan Simmons, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Philip K Dick, Robert Heinlein, Orson Scott Card, Ursula le Guin)
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