London above, London below. Okay so I guess I didn’t really understand what the book was about. Seeing that I had just finished Stardust you would have thought I would have been expecting a wilder story than I was. I was thinking more along the lines of Futurama - mutants living under the streets.
It took me a few chapters to orient myself with the London below concept. It wasn’t until I accepted that this was a magical world that I was okay. So I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes, so sue me. I enjoyed the adventure of the story, the descriptions of the locations, I even got into the idea of London below where nothing is as it seems. The names of the tube stations denote who or what is there. There are Friar’s at Blackfriars, and at Earl’s court resides, that’s right, the Earl. Richards companion on his journey, or maybe it’s the other way around, Door, can open doors and just about anything else that is closed. In a way the whole thing reminded me a little bit of the Matrix.
I don’t really like to read into the meaning of stories. At least not in the sense of this is what the Author was trying to say. I remember in high school I had a teacher who told about the time an author came into class to discuss the book he had written with the class. One of the students went on and on about how he liked the symbol of a clock at the end of one of the chapters. After the student was done the Author said, well thank you but really I was just trying to think of a way to end the chapter and the first thing I saw when I looked up was a clock. Classic. That said, I think that Richard Mayhew was just looking for a place to call home, a worlds to belong to. It obviously wasn’t with his fiancée Jessica. The only real problem I had with the story is that in London above, everyone is so mean. The characters, esp Jessica, have one personality trait. Richard feels like he is invisible, letting life go by while he just goes through the motions. Or maybe I’m just thinking of myself here. No pictures in this book but the written images kept me satisfied throughout
