Tuesday, February 15, 2005

REVIEW: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

My Rating: 8 out of 10 stars

This was the first book (or story) I've read by Neil Gaiman, and I found it a pretty interesting read. It had the air of a wild, hallucination. One of the blurbs at the front of the book compared it to Alice in Wonderland which I think would be an accurate comparison once you figure in the dark aspect of the novel.

I really like dark novels and there wasn't anything I didn't like about this book. However, I couldn't give it a 10 simply because, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I couldn't quite rank it up there with my favorites that I've given the highest possible score. Perhaps it was the inability to fully relate and sympathize with any particular character in the story. Not that you don't feel for them in some way, they were certainly depicted well enough, and quite colorful as someone else mentioned. But only Richard's, and sometimes Door's character, managed to endear themselves to me in any meaningful way. On Amazon's scale though, being a smaller range, I'd probably give it a 5, the highest. The BC ratings scale of 1 through 10 allows for a bit finer distinction between those that are your absolute favorites and those books you really liked a lot. I definitely plan to read more of Gaiman's work in the future.

View at Amazon

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