Great When

This is what you get when someone with a rich and powerful imagination is able to combine it with a marvellous command of descriptive language. Set in the immediate post-war period in a heavily bomb scarred London our hero, Dennis, inadvertently takes possession of a book from a bizarre alternate London. In his attempts to return it and thus undo the rift it has opened up he meets a range of brilliantly drawn characters, many of whom speak in a surprisingly readable cockney vernacular, and all of whom have real depth. I like that the ostensible “story” (returning the book “McGuffin”) is actually resolved about halfway through and a completely new and unexpected story arc takes over. I also like that, at least in this first volume, there is no real redemption for Dennis; indeed he ends in very much the same state as he started, minus his bad frame. Nothing about this book follows the standard tropes – it is an amalgam of Neverwhere, Rivers of London and Unlundun but arguably better…