For anyone familiar with Neverwhere which should I do first?
Watch the series on DVD or read the book? Since the series came first that would seem to be the logical order but logical isn’t always the most enjoyable.
I’ve read that Neil Gaiman was a bit diappointed in the Miniseries and that is why he wrote the book.
If you’ve seen/read both which would you have done first given a choice? Do you think Miniseries would spoil the book? Would watching the Miniseries be disappointing or redundant after reading the book?
I’m about halfway through the book (very good); don’t intend to see it in any other format.
In most cases, it is best to read the book and (if you really want to) then watch the movie/series. The major exception is books that exist as novelisations.
The novel Neverwhere essentially is a novelization of the miniseries, although it’s a horse of a different color than most such book.
Neil Gaiman wrote the script to the BBC series first. He later used this project as the basis for a novel. I have never seen the series, but I know Gaiman has said that the novel allowed him to expand upon some things there was not time for in the series (including scenes that were in his script but ended up on the cutting-room floor).
It was a 1996 BBC miniseries with six half-hour episodes that just came out on DVD here in the US. The book was written afterwards.
I never got the time this summer read the book and now that the DVD I had pre-ordered from Amazon has come I find myself with a very minor dilemma.
I’ve had experiences where I’ve seen a movie/series, liked it and want to read the book but I usually find it so different that I’m ‘distracted’ enough to not enjoy what might be a better telling of the story.
On the other hand I did read The Lord of the Rings years before watching the movies and found that I love the movies, probably because they are bringing the wonderful story back to me.
I read the book first, when it originally came out in the States, then I saw the miniseries later. I actually found the miniseries quite enjoyable, and the book was only OK. The “extra scenes” that were in the book weren’t particularly necessary, and some seemed to be only distractions, though pretty cool ones.
The miniseries suffers from the same sorts of things most BBC productions do – low-budget special effects and low-quality film. If you can get over these things, it’s well-made and a well-acted. In particular, the actor playing Richard (the main character) is ideal for the role, the guys playing Croup and Valdemar are delightfully wicked, the man playing the Marquis is very cool (perhaps the best of the bunch), and the girl who plays Door is stunning, and almost exactly what I envisioned as I read the book. The story in the miniseries moves along well and makes its point without being trite or obvious. Oh, and the title sequence (designed and edited by Dave McKean, of course) is really cool.
The book is pretty good, too, but it frankly bogs down in a few places. I rarely say this about Gaiman, but he could have used a better editor for the novel version of Neverwhere, as his usually solid story pacing seemed to be absent for this one. He seemed to have a lot of really cool ideas he wanted to include in the story, and was willing to sacrifice the pace of the story to do it.
What it comes down for me is that Neverwhere was originally written as a miniseries, and it works best as a miniseries. I had a similar problem with Stardust, which began life as a graphic novel and was later turned into a prose novel by Gaiman. The graphic novel, gorgeously illustrated by Charles Vess, is by far the more enjoyable version. Though the difference for Neverwhere is not as big, the original miniseries version strikes me as the better one. YMMV and all that.
Even not having seen the mini-series, I’d have to guess it’s better. The book doesn’t seem to make any damn sense- which is why I’ve had it for nine months without getting more than 1/3rd into it. I’d hoped it was just a poor attempt at novelizing the mini-series, but I’ve found I just don’t like his writing even when it does make sense.
That’s funny; I was under the impression that the text of Stardust was pretty much the same between the graphic novel and the novel. From what I understand, all Neil did was add a descriptive bit here and there.
Besides, Stardust was not a traditional graphic novel, with panels and word balloons. The DC edition was more of a prose story with illustrations.
My PBS station showed the miniseries a few years ago - I caught the second half of it, (I was up late one night and it looked interesting) and then read the book.
I think you could go either way - however, for an American who is entirely unfamiliar with the London Underground (with the exception of “um, it’s the subway system, right?”), the map in the book really, really helped with making sense of the whole thing.
Perhaps that was the problem, then. Perhaps it simply worked better as a graphic novel. All I can say for sure is that it didn’t work very well as a prose-only piece. For me, anyway.
Yes, but such illustrations. They really add a great deal to the presentation. Enough that the prose by itself seems somewhat empty without it.
Actually, the illustrations seemed so integral to the graphic novel that I see them as part of the story. They weren’t integrated like a comic book, but Charles Vess made such magic with his work on Stardust that it’s hard to get into the story without it. Reading the prose-only novel of Stardust seemed bone-dry to me, compared to the graphic novel.
I guess all I’m saying is that for me, with both Stardust and Neverwhere, the original versions were better than the novelized versions. A prose book is not necessarily the ideal form for all stories, and perhaps these are two stories better told via a different medium.
That’s funny: I misread the OP title as “Neil Gaiman’s everywhere”, and I thought it was going to be about what a prolific writer and media figure Gaiman was.
That said, I haven’t seen or read “Neverwhere”, but I definitely intend to some day.
