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3.5/5 Stars

Whether you’ve read his book or not, there is a high chance that you have heard of the name Neil Gaiman if you’re a reader and most people probably loved his works. Let’s just say I finally knew why. I knew about him since 2009 from watching the movie Coraline which I loved and turns out it was based on a book written by him and that movie shocked the crap out of me cause it so imaginative and scary at times, I thought it would be a family movie. Fast forward 8 years later and here I am finally reading his first solo book. This is my first try at reafing Neil Gaiman’s work and my first try at the genre ‘Urban Fantasy�.

The plot in my opinion is good but it’s really not something great, it’s just there to move the story along which is completely fine for me but I just wish it’s something more special considering the praises Neil got. This is one of the rare cases where the blurb of the book only give the basic plot of the first 2 chapter without ruining your reading experience so if you want to know what the basic premise of the book is about you can start there.

What fascinates me the most about this book is instead the world that Neil created. The world of London Below is highly imaginative, it twisted our real world London and makes it into something resembling Hell. Consisting of bizarre characters, creatures and combined with Neil Gaiman’s storytelling skill, it made the setting a really unique place to visit (not literally.)

Here’s a fantastic artwork done by Marc Simonetti to show a comparison of the London Above (our world) and London Below (alternative world).



There’s a lot of good character here but other than the main character, Richard, there’s too little development for any of them. It’s understandable though since this is a short book and there’s not enough room for improvement other than the main character. I loved the character development of Richard, it’s amusing to see how he changed from his first appearance until the last part of the book and a plus also to the main villains Croup & Vandemar which provided their scary nature while sometimes being funny at the same time with their banter towards each other.

There’s quite an annoying problem when I’m reading this though but this could be just me. There’s a lot of places mentioned in the book which doesn’t contained any description at all! I know it’s because the setting are based on our real world but for me who never goes to London and know about it only from movies and the TV series Sherlock Holmes (THE NEW SEASON IS COMING OUT IN 3 DAYS BTW), I have to Google Image almost every places mentioned in the book otherwise I can’t imagine what the setting of the story even look like. The only places I didn’t Google are Trafalgar Square, London Bridge and Big Ben. (Btw, are all Urban Fantasy the same case as this?)

By the end of this book, I can’t help but feel I wanted a sequel and I'm looking forward to read more of Neil's work. I’ll recommend this book to anyone looking for a fast Urban Fantasy read with unique writing style. I’ll leave this review with my favorite quote in the book, which probably you won’t understand the meaning behind them but once you read this book, you’ll know why I really love this quote.

“I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane.�