Prompt – A banned book (meant to be read in banned books week, but I was early – this book was banned in parts of the American South).
Medium – Book
About the Book – Set in London, this book tells the story of Richard Mayhew, a normal young businessman, with a fiancee, a flat and a good, if slightly boring, job. One day, on his way to a restaurant with his fiancee, he stumbles across a badly injured young woman who he takes home with him, leading to the break-up of his relationship. He then finds himself thrown into the world of London Below, a land of multiple timestreams, monsters, saints, angels, hunters, murderers and mysterious girls in velvet. The injured young woman turns out to be Lady Door, who is on a quest to avenge her murdered family. Richard joins her, alongside the mysterious Marquis de Carabas and Hunter, the bodyguard. But soon he will find that there is a strange destiny awaiting him in London below, which he is powerless to deny…
My Rating – 8/10. This book is one that my husband has been nagging me to read for years, after buying it for me many Christmases ago. When I found out that it had been a banned book in the Deep South of America (as many of the best books are…), I decided to use it as my banned book and my final prompt for the reading challenge. This book took a little while to get into, but unlike other books I have read which I could speed through as there was no depth to them, this book had a truly thought-provoking storyline, multi-dimensional characters, and really surreal plot twists, which I really enjoyed. The descriptions of London Below as a twisted version of London Above (i.e. Blackfriars being an abbey of actual friars, Earl’s Court being the court of an Earl on an underground train) were fantastic, and I enjoyed seeing all of the mirrors between the fantasy world and this one.
I also really liked the characters – Richard is a bit of a wimp to start off with, but really grows into a character that you just want to succeed. The female characters are great – Door, Hunter, Lamia and Anaesthesia, although they appear for varying lengths of time, are strong, interesting characters with very definite motives. The baddies are sufficiently evil, doing away with their victims in very imaginative and gory ways, but always with a pinch of humour – I can see why Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman collaborated with each other as their writing styles are really similar. As the last book for this reading challenge, I feel like this was a really interesting one to end on – fantasy, my favourite genre, but very much a twist on this.
Would I read it again? Probably – but I am very much looking forward to reading more books on my TBR pile!
So, the end of my challenge – now I have a massive pile of other books, and a load of audiobooks to have a listen to! I’m going to write a summing-up post, rating some of my favourite (and least favourite) books of the year.
Jen's Book Blog 