*The world is divided into two parts- London Above and London Below,
The one above is bright and jazzy, but the other is where lights seldom glow!
In search of his identity, he plunges into this world below of gloom,
Will he accomplish his mission of existence or lose himself in a depressing doom?*
Neil Gaiman: He is a best-selling author who writes fantasy for children as well as adults. His best works till date are ‘The Graveyard book’, ‘American Gods’ and ‘Neverwhere.’ This book was the novelization of the teleplay mini-series – Neverwhere also written by Gaiman.
Plot: Richard Mayhew, a man of simple pleasures and a boring, but tedious life has a dominating fiancée.
One day, he encounters an injured girl on a sidewalk. He helps her and takes care of her much to the dismay of his fiancée. Surprisingly, the injured girl called ‘Lady Door’ disappears into thin air after thanking him the very next day. Ever since she left, no one is able to recognize Richard. He has somehow lost his job, his fiancée as well as his house. He is now invisible and matters nothing to his friends and family.
Frustrated, he is convinced that the injured girl obviously knows the answer to this riddle of his very existence. He sets off to find her. His search takes him to an astonishing place called ‘London Below’. This place is below the streets of London! A whole fascinating place exists in the sewers of the city that consists of people who speak to rats, eat anything and everything, wear queer cast-away clothes and people who have magical qualities like cheating death and creating doors to any place imaginable or unimaginable. These are the residents of ‘London Below’ - a troupe of individuals fallen through the cracks from the face of the earth. Eventually, Richard manages to find the girl(called’Lady Door’) who has a magical ability to open any kind of door. However, she herself is in trouble since someone in London Below has murdered her family members and now is in search of her.
Will Richard be able to find the reason behind his lost identity? Will the ‘Lady Door’ guide Richard to get his life back? With both their lives hanging from a string, will anyone help them?
My Opinion: When I read ‘The Graveyard Book’ by this author, I was sure I would enjoy trying his other books. Luckily, our library offered this book in audio form.
When I started listening to this book, I never expected to reach the end. It was an unbelievable story with some gross details of the people living in London Below. All the same, I caught myself being inquisitive enough to find what happened next. The credit mainly goes to the author for his narration skills. After experiencing this, I observed that the ‘Fantasy genre’ which enthralled me when I entered the world of Harry Potter can also take up a whole new dark and eerie scene. The ending is well concluded as well. There is a slight trace of a mystery in this journey, but this story would be described better as a thrill ride where one enjoys the journey more than the revelation at the end! The only parts I did not enjoy were the strewn descriptions of rotting corpses, bloated dead bodies, rat eating men and frog eating women. Hence I am lowering the rating from 4 to 3 stars!
Listening to an audiobook was a thrilling experience. It was read by the author Neil Gaiman himself and in an astonishingly professional voice-artistic way providing satisfactory voice overs for the characters- Sounding evil when the lines were by the villains and sounding lady-like when Door spoke! Coming to think of it, the author was the best choice to read his own book since no one was better fit to do justice to the whimsical nature of the story.
Happy Reading, Fantasy Fans!