The Great When

Starred review from July 15, 2024
Bestseller Moore (Illuminations) brings the rich detail and intricate plotting familiar to his fans to the first epic fantasy in his Long London series, set in 1949 and premised on the notion that “there might be a higher world concealed behind our own.” That hidden truth is revealed to an entertainingly unprepossessing protagonist, 18-year-old Dennis Knuckleyard, who works in a used bookstore owned by his landlady, Coffin Ada. Dennis encounters the supernatural while on a quotidian errand: he’s sent to another book dealer to purchase a lot of rare Arthur Machen books, hopefully at a bargain. But the haul includes an additional title, Reverend Thomas Hampole’s A London Walk: Meditations in the Streets of the Metropolis, which, Coffin Ada reveals, is not a real book: “It’s not in catalogues. It’s not in libraries. Arthur fucking Machen made it up in a cough cough cough novel.... This shouldn’t be here. This comes from cough cough cough somewhere else.” Possessing this little piece of a parallel universe soon proves deadly dangerous, and could break down the barriers between the “real” London and the one Dennis lives in, which, it turns out, is just a shadow of the other. The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in.

July 1, 2024

Dennis Knuckleyard is an 18-year-old orphan who works for Coffin Ada in a bookshop. The keen bibliophilic neophyte sets off on a mission to collect books for his employer. However, one of the books he collects is not supposed to exist because it originates from the abstract blend of dreams and nightmares that is the other London. When he tries to return it, his life is dunked in a mire of murder and mayhem, and his only hope of saving it is to contend with the villains of the underworld. Moore is the acclaimed creator of a number of bestselling graphic novels, such as Watchmen and V for Vendetta, and his latest novel evokes the same vibrant imagery with its prose. Though overly descriptive at times, his lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humor. The dynamic plot winds through the horrors of postwar London, which comes to life on the page. VERDICT This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colorful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke.--Andrea Dyba

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2024
Moore, author of Jerusalem (2016) and Illuminations (2022), introduces a new series with this first volume. Young Dennis Knuckleyard works for Coffin Ada, a terrifying old woman who coughs constantly and generally torments him; he's nervous when she sends him to acquire a collection of occult books from a local seller. But when he brings home an extra book, she sits him down with a firm warning. This book should not exist. It comes from a different London, a "realer" version of archetypes and incarnations. And Dennis will have to enter the other London if he doesn't want to be killed for having proof that it exists. The novel is full of wild characters, and Dennis is at a loss in their midst, doing his best merely to get himself out of all this, much in the vein of Richard Mayhew in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Moore's latest is a love letter to the city of London, full of small ironies and nods to the history and character of its neighborhoods as well as its resilience post-WWII.

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Starred review from December 1, 2024
In 1949 London, a bookseller's clerk stumbles into a secret, exceptionally dangerous aspect of his city. Physically and emotionally awkward Dennis Knuckleyard is negotiating for a job lot of books written by occult author Arthur Machen when he falls into a weird sort of trap. One of those books is a dangerous metafiction: It's an imaginary book that Machen refers to in one of his stories, but which shouldn't exist independently. The unreal volume represents a breach into Long London, aka the "Great When" of the title, a theoretical landscape populated by archetypes and other strange, dangerous beings, and the philosophical foundation of material London. Finding both peril and assistance in unexpected places, Dennis must get the book back to Long London, and also facilitate a meeting between a crime kingpin and one of Long London's denizens, the embodiment of crime itself. As always, Moore's prose harks back to the New Wave movement of speculative fiction so prevalent in the 1960s and '70s; it's strongly reminiscent of Michael Moorcock's more experimental work. The style is well suited to the more hallucinatory passages depicting Long London; and yet, this novel is actually plotted more straightforwardly than one might expect of Moore, who usually delights in elaborate tangents. Though still grounded in cynicism, it also displays more faith in people than is typical for the author; while the setting is a grim post-war London featuring both human and inhuman monsters, the protagonist, Dennis, discovers multiple instances of kindness from complete strangers who have no obvious motivation to help him as much as they do. Moore is certainly far from the first to write about a magical London or a parallel London, but his evocation is well drawn and unique. This first installment of a projected series is clearly a prelude to something interesting--whatever it turns out to be--and solid indication that Moore, who is still mostly known for his iconic graphic novels (Watchmen, 1987, etc.), does not require an artist to paint a picture. Dark, sordid, gritty, thrilling, and gorgeous in its own peculiar way.

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