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Neil Gaiman may be a poster boy for the recent ascent of the Geek. The guy got his break writing comics. Comics. Comic books. He even wrote some superhero comics of all things. But now his voice can steer the vessel of popular interest. People are buying his movie rights before he finishes a writing project. He’s one of the writers many readers will recognize on sight. He’s the geek who made good. 

That all being said, I have yet to solidify my love for him. I appreciate a number of his works. I often parallel his tastes in writers (Wolfe, Mirrlees, Clarke, Chesterton). I respect his championing of “genre” fiction. But I have yet to give my heart entirely to his creative labors. And certain pieces of his sensibilities move contrary to my own. This has me hesitant to step into works that receive high praise as I know they have content I will abhor. So I slowly unpack his bibliography waiting to find a gem that will unite us two. 

Which brings me to beginning a new reading project by reading his first solo written novel, Neverwhere (1996). This accompanied the BBC mini-series of the same name that was released concurrently. I’ve long heard about the project and seen stills from the show, but if I am honest it lived a little ways down in my Gaiman queue. 

So why did I choose Neverwhere I don’t hear you ask? Well, it appears on TIME’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time List, and after completing my MacDonald to Tolkien Fantasy reading, I wanted to shake up my next system of delving fairyland. While TIME’s list is deeply flawed, it put Neverwhere back on my radar and I thought, “Maybe this is the Gaiman work that will win me.” It was also on sale. 

And thus a new adventure into mythopoeia begins. 

To pop your non-existent tension, this was not the key that unlocked Gaiman for me. That being said, it is ultimately a fun ride. It has a lot of Gaimanisms: if you know his work, you’ll see parallel characters, scenarios, and themes. And while the book isn’t spotless from the profane, it is also not as severe as some of his other work. I will still send people to The Graveyard Book (2008) first (with the caveat that Kipling did it better), but Neverwhere succeeds in some ways Graveyard failed. 

Neverwhere is what I would call an Incursion Fantasy—it is similar to Looking-glass or Portal Fantasy, but the world of Fairy actually intertwines with the “real” world. Our “hero” Richard Mayhew is a mundane Londoner living a dull and sterile life in London Above. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but his by-the-numbers existence gets rocked by the sudden appearance of a girl from the hidden and mysterious London Below. (I didn’t mean actually stop me. Listen, just ride this out. I’ll try not to go on too long. (edit: I failed))

Richard becomes our perspective for wandering the wonders (and horrors) of London Below where the forgotten of society dwell. Fantasy literature loves the outcast because its primary audience feels outcast. To some extent this is a self-fulfilling cycle, but Gaiman is contributing to the spin. Taking the feeling and making it literal, our character finds himself invisible to everything and everyone that made up his life of normalcy. His personal stated quest throughout is to restore his life. He wants to be visible by London Above. But you know how it will turn out….

As for London Below, there’s a lot of Gaiman at play here, the fantastic inverts reality. We walk a mirror world where Blackfriars, London actually contains friars in black robes. We have rat-speakers, marquises, barons, england-old assassins, an angel—there are creative pictures painted.

It tickled my imagination. I enjoyed my time in Gaiman’s world. I felt some camaraderie with the dregs of London Below. I understood the invisibleness of the other. 

A common struggle I have with Gaiman is his propensity to begin making a world and for lack of edges he drops the thing before it clarifies. And to be myself clear, I don’t mean that he leaves too many things unwritten and with subtle strokes leaves it in the reader’s camp to discern. For my money, it has felt like his vagueness is caused by shallowness. As both a reader and student of Gene Wolfe, Gaiman is clearly attracted to subterfuge, but I have rarely had the sense that Gaiman has as much behind the papier-mâché. London Below and thus Neverwhere does feel more enfleshed, though. 

But there were two realms that felt like they could have launched his fey into another stratosphere, however. First, Doors. Not Door, who is our female lead, but Doors—though they are related. Gaiman presents an idea of doors which speaks to the romance of every door. The two-headed god Janus was excited for his time to shine. But while this gets used as an inconsistent power and a part of our macguffin, it lies fallow as a theme. It goes kind of like, “Hey, aren’t doors rich with theme-y stuff? Why don’t you run with that, I’m too busy writing.”

Our second element of worldbuilding that I believe could have made London Below so much, dare I say, deeper, is its ties to London’s history. There are little moments of it. Small hints of the secret history of Lud’s Town. But the particular way he managed this felt like a couple tacks on the wall. His hints went small rather than expansive. As soon as your mind was excited by the secrets, they were revealed and shut. That being said, my recent trip to London made the geography of Neverwhere very tangible, which was splendid. 

Another Gaimanic struggle I have had, especially with his novels I have read, is his endings. Similar to his above work of subterfuge, a work like The Graveyard Book feels like Gaiman just runs out of steam and cuts things short before people realize he didn’t have that much under the hood. I will say Neverwhere’s ending felt complete. If maybe lackluster. And trust me, you can write the epilogue. At least as far as the plot. So he does end it. It just ends without saying anything.

Which does bring us to Gaiman’s prose. This is one of the things Gaiman is known for. Silky smooth prose, best read in his voice. Neverwhere feels toned down. His skill is apparent. But he minimizes flourish. For his first solo novel, I can appreciate the restraint. And the little smart moments he litters throughout gave me a thrill. But if you want to experience his best prose you’ll want to hunt elsewhere. 

Ultimately the world and its building is a positive for the work, but the story and its characters never speak. What do I mean? The attention is on the oddness of the world: the characters don’t speak to who you are as a human being. At least not beyond a purely elementary level. This is best shown in the quest. Is there a quest that drives this fantasy story forward? Yes. Jokingly associated with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), we are solving a mystery that has sat oddly untouched for years. And Richard’s quest to go home. The strange delay and introduction to the mystery impair a sense of urgency. The primary urgency of the piece are our two terrible loveable odd-ball prehistoric assassins, who are literally hired to move our protagonists forward in the story. 

Richard is not just the “normal man” but he’s intentionally terrible at the Quest. The character has been redone so many times, but his big moment of triumph in the book has no teeth. You don’t feel the accompanying triumph. Essentially he triumphs over being a loser. And is still going to take until the end to realize what you knew would be the case from the beginning. 

Gaiman’s quest doesn’t speak. 

So come for his inverted London that does. 

Neverwhere (1996) (Novel)  +1*

*my rating scale is from -2 (strong dislike) to +3 (sings to my soul)