View original postIt's a novelisation of a tv series he wrote for the BBC in the early nineties. It quite clearly shows it's roots as a story initially intended to be told with an episodic structure.
View original postView original postI found it utterly boring and unimaginative, the characters were hollow and the plot seemed like a high schooler's first stab at a novel. You would think the idea of a parallel London underground from the real London would be a great setting but it really fell flat for me; I wouldn't want to visit his parallel world. I simply could not make it through no matter how hard I tried.
View original postView original postThat said, maybe I went wrong with the guy? I had always heard good things about him but then I began reading Neverwhere and I could not figure out why people thought he was so great. I am not against trying him again in the future but for now I have put him aside for other authors that I have heard about. I just finished my first experience with Guy Gavriel Kay via his stand alone novel Tigana and thought it very good. Kay's writing just seemed so much more mature than Gaiman's.
View original postI just have to chip in and say I found Tigana a chore to read. It's quite Tolkien-esque in style, if not in content, and I found it all quite predictable and plodding.
I did feel it was a little too drawn out in a few parts but overall for my first experience with Kay I thought the book good. I thought he did a very good job of humanizing Branden which is what most of the reviews I read of the book pointed out. I don't like over the top magic and Tigana's magic certainly wasn't that, it was believable and several of the characters grew on me even though I didn't like them at first. Anyway, I was referencing more just his writing style and "prose" if you will. Gaiman's Neverwhere read to me in a very simplistic style as if written for a 12 year old. The entire story came across that way. In all fairness, given his success at kids/young adult stories, that might just be his style and not my cup of tea. I do admit the novel American Gods seems to have an interesting premise and maybe I'll try him again in the future, I'm open to it but I think Kay's style is just more my level of story.
View original postView original postI don't want to discourage you, it just may be that Gaiman isn't really my cup of tea in the end and so Neverwhere didn't click with me, but I just could not, for whatever reason, get into his style. Hopefully you have better luck.
But wine was the great assassin of both tradition and propriety...
-Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
- 20/07/2013 10:15:51 AM
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