Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

18 reviews

nicnevin's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Child death, Mental illness, Suicide, Blood, Classism, Confinement, Death, Body horror, Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Alcohol, Gore, Grief, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Excrement, Kidnapping, Ableism, Addiction, Death of parent, Cursing, Drug use, Violence, Vomit, and Murder

silver_valkyrie_reads's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is maybe the third time I've read this book, and I'm not sure why I don't read it more often. I love this story! 

 The worldbuilding here has totally seeped into the way I see the real world, as every hidden doorway and obscure corner are clearly parts of Whatever-City-I'm-In Below. And Richard Mayhew is cleverly disguised as an ordinary bumbling idiot, but in the ways that really count he's everything I love about a classic hero. 

 There are occasional places that get unnecessarily dark and icky for my tastes (and to be clear, many more than are dark and icky, but in ways that ARE necessary for the story) but I've never felt like this story wallowed in the darkness. It more presents that there is a whole lot of darkness in this world, and mildly wonders what you would like to do about it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Murder

Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Suicidal thoughts, Animal death, Death of parent, and Torture

Minor: Infidelity and Vomit

byrdies's review

adventurous dark funny mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I would consider myself a fan of Neil Gaiman's writing, and Neverwhere has a lot of the charm and soul to it. The protagonist is Richard Mayhew, a boring Londoner in an unsatisfying relationship working a comfortable job that doesn't challenge him. Richard's life is interrupted quite abruptly when Door, a filthy and very injured teenage girl, appears in front of him and asks for help. When Richard accepts, he finds himself on a whirlwind adventure in London Below, an alternate invisible London populated by those who have slipped through the cracks of every day life. It's a place where the worst and the best of humanity are brought within reach through a pliable relationship with reality, and that made it easy to immerse myself in the story. Most of the ensemble cast felt two dimensional to me, but that doesn't mean the characters were boring nor that they didn't successfully fill the narrative role Neil Gaiman cast them in. I find myself revisiting this book when I need something adventurous with a strong emotional through line that I can read in 1-2 sittings. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Child death, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual content, and Vomit

leonormsousa's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Child death, Death of parent, Gore, Kidnapping, Murder, Torture, Violence, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Grief, Slavery, and Stalking

nebraskanwriter's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Blood, Genocide, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Murder, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

toffishay's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I enjoyed the world more than the characters that we followed through it

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Classism, and Violence

Minor: Death, Death of parent, and Child death

ashbcgc's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent and Death

Moderate: Child death

bluejayreads's review

Everything in this review is based on a sample size of the three Neil Gaiman books I’ve actually read (this one, American Gods, and Anansi Boys), but discounting American Gods as an outlier since it was, you know, actually enjoyable. So feel free to take this whole review with a grain of salt. 

Now that that’s said – I hope Neil Gaiman is okay. 

Excepting American Gods, the two books of his I’ve read feature protagonists who are spineless, vaguely depressed young men with mediocre-to-horrible corporate jobs, dating strong-willed, domineering, beautiful women whom they let walk all over them. In this book, Richard made his first independent choice when he defied his girlfriend to help a girl bleeding in the street, and even though it was only about 15% of the way into the book I was SO READY for her to go. 

I think Richard was the reason I didn’t end up finishing this one. I could not bring myself to care about him. There were some vaguely interesting things happening around him – a very weird homeless girl named Door, people who seem to be able to talk to rats, sewer tunnels going places sewer tunnels could not logically go – but Richard himself was so boring. He didn’t even have enough personality to actively hate – the best I could manage was aggressive indifference. 

It’s funny to me that the same things I hate about Richard in Neverwhere – the bland generic everyman-ness, seemingly existing for the sole purpose of being the reader’s avatar through a weird and magical world – I didn’t mind at all in Shadow in American Gods. I think part of it was the spineless-man-with-domineering-girlfriend aspect, which is a horrible dynamic and not one Shadow was part of since he was a widower. 

I think the other part is agency. I’m always complaining about characters having agency. Whether they’re forced into dealing with something by the plot or by their own dealings, whether their actions make things better or worse, the only thing I require of characters is that they take actions of their own volition. I’ve stopped reading because characters did their best to avoid acting and because characters were prevented from taking any action. The one and only action Richard chose to take was to help the bleeding girl against his girlfriend’s wishes, and then he pretty much got dragged along for the rest of what I read. And I couldn’t bring myself to care about anything happening since it was all happening to him instead of him actually being involved in the story. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship

Moderate: Blood, Child death, and Death of parent

Minor: Sexual content