Neverwhere Book Review

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I’ve never actually read any books by Neil Gaiman, but wanted to give him a go because so many people say his writing is really good. Neverwhere is set in London – though not entirely the London we all know. With an overground and underground world, the protagonist Richard Mayhew finds himself in some sticky situations when he is thrust head-first into the beguiling world of London Below when he meets Door. In a world with angels, talking rodents, and powers allowing people to come back from the dead, how on earth will he regain some normalcy in his life knowing this world exists?

This book was very meh for me. I really liked Gaiman’s writing and I found parts of it really funny (the British on-the-nose humour is spot on) but wow I did not care about the characters. As I never really connected with any of them, I really struggled to find it interesting. Even the twist at the end felt very underwhelming, and by that point, I really didn’t care.

There’s no denying that Gaiman has a vivd imagination, and his ideas are both unique and alluring, but I wish I had loved this book more!! I think I wanted to love all the “weird” things about it, but none of them really hit the spot for me. I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what I wanted from the book which I didn’t get, so the best way of explaining it is just that it didn’t do what I wanted it to (vague, I know!)

The only character I really liked was Door; there’s a sense of something at stake for her and her storyline (as she spends most of the book trying to discover why her family was murdered) so I enjoyed the parts of the story which focussed on that. But again, I wish the reveal would have been more exciting – I was just very underwhelmed!

Its saving grace is that it’s such a unique premise that I certainly hadn’t read anything like it before, and I definitely think that if I can find another of his books where I find the characters more compelling, it’s something I would enjoy reading. Maybe something which focused more on mythology as I find that interesting (I have got Gaiman’s Norse Mythology so maybe I should finally read that!)

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All in all I am sure there are plenty of people who love this book and plenty of people who will read it and not at all agree with my judgements. I respect the novel for being imaginative and well-written – it just wasn’t for me. I really liked the adaptation of Gaiman’s Good Omens, so if one of his novels gives me the same feeling as that show did, I am sure I will love it! I think the tricky bit will be working out which one that is…