The Great When by Alan Moore

The Blurb

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Introduction

I listened to this one on Audible and bought it for two primary reasons: 1) it is narrated by the incredible Kobna Holdbrook-Smith who narrates the Rivers of London series Ben Aaronovitch and 2) it was on sale for under £5. Also, as I have mentioned in other reviews I am a sucker for urban fantasy, especially if it is set in London as, having lived there for a few years, I love reading about it as a setting for the fantastical. All this is to say that I had very few expectations or preconceptions about this book.

What I Loved

The Bizarre

So its set in London in the post war late 1940s, a fairly familiar setting both physically and also time-wise, BUT then there is a whole Other London lying side by side with the London we know. This Other London is a psychedelic kaeldescopic shrooms induced head-fuck. Some parts are an enchanting garden of delights while others are the stuff of nightmares with Soho drainpipes twisting into man-eating anacondas and paving slabs which are really leg chomping crocodiles. I'm not doing it justice - it is truely bizarre and Moore's prose is perfect for transporting you into this teriffying fucked up fascimilie of London. I know this concept of a hidden London isn't unique, Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is based on a similar concept, however,  Moore's version is really turns up the dial on the weirdness. I loved this.

Some of the characters are real people

I confess that my knowledge of the main players in the mid-century London occult scene is not somthing to write home about, so I didn't realise until I listened to the bonus content to the Audiobook (which interestingly is read by Alan Moore himself) that a number of the characters were semi-famous people from London's past. This meant that I spent a fun half an hour or so after finishing the book googling various characters and events and being impressed by Moore's cleverness. One of the reasons I like urban fantasy is that it is magical goings on grounded in our world, so the fact that Moore borrowed from history only served to make his London more realistic.

Dennis and Coffin Ada

Dennis Knuckleyard is the books main character and Ada is his landlady and boss. Dennis is not the sharpest knife in the draw, but he is sweet, earnest and brave in his own way. I enjoyed following him and I was definietly rooting for him to survive his sudden and terrifying brush with the Other London.

His landlady / boss / replacement mother figure is an absolute scene stealer throughout the book - I would love to read a prequel which is essentially her back story. Moore paints such a clear picture of her and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith does an incredible job in bringing her to life, she really jumps of the page at you swearing, hawking up phlegm and demanding your attention.  Here are a couple of horribly visceral description's of her person:

Mercifully his employer was already dressed, in that her horrible pink dressing grown was knotted at the waist and she already had the half smoked park drive plane glued to her curling lower lip.

She commenced a shuffling circuit of the premises in slippers which were either tarten or elaborately stained... Atop her thiny papered skull stood the stiff mass that had once been a hairstyle, before decades of neglect compacted it to off-white rhino horn.

Production value

The quality of the audiobook was great, whenever Dennis crossed into the Other London a swirly unsettleing background ambience was played which really added to the dreamscape vibe. As I already said, the narrator is amazing and once again delivered a stellar performance.

What fell flat

Wading through the unbelievably dense prose

I'm not sure if Moore is one of those people who read the dictionary / thesaurus for fun, but jeeze, it felt like he was getting paid by the word with a bonus for using obscure words of 5+ syllables! Don't get me wrong, sometimes he created these poignant and memorable descriptions of people / feelings / events which I adored but for every one of these gems was fifty needlessly long and wordy passages. I think I would have really struggled if I was reading this rather than listening to it.

Plot

The story was slow to start and the intro chapter was a very descriptve sequence with characters who then didn't really feature later in the book. I was ready to give up but was saved just in the nick of time by the introduction of Dennis and Coffin Ada. Once the story did start, I enjoyed it. Things were ticking along nicely with Dennis running around the city trying to get the mysterious book back where it belonged while avoiding a notorious and violent gangster and his goons, but then that storyline was resolved about two thirds of the way through the book and I was left wondering what else could happen.

It turns out, not a lot. A new baddie was introduced with little preamble and there was some tantalising foreshadowing from a murderous talking cat about Dennis putting the Other London at risk, but ultimately I thought both plot points felt flat and the end of the story just limped into the sunset. I think it would have been better for Moore to beef up the first plot and make the resolution of that the end of the book rather than stretch things out. Also, this is billed as a series, but The Great When could easily be a stand alone book as the character of Dennis really runs their course. Perhaps the next installment will follow a new character or dive into the perspective of one we have already met (fingers crossed for a Coffin Ada prequel!).

Conclusion

I enjoyed this book and I will probably listen to the next one in the series when it comes out. Though it definitely has some flaws, I think Moore's bizarre vision and his ability to twist reality to fit his version of London carries the day.