The Great When

Reviews

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. [Moore’s] lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humor . . . This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colorful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke. Like Dickens, Alan Moore has us waiting on the dock, impatient for the next installment of his breathless, time-travelling classic. A preternaturally convincing hallucination from London's fetid past transports us, in some mysterious way, over the abyss of our impoverished post-digital present. Savage, humane, comic, terrifying: and that's just the first page. Now read on. A profound, gorgeous novel of secret magics and lost souls. The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in. A rollicking adventure. A wildly kinetic and entertaining adventure . . . as well as a kind of postwar coming-of-age tale for its young protagonist and his spirited companion. Alan Moore is a visionary artist and a myth maker, and in The Great When he delivers the mystical core of the occult tradition of London: a fantasy novel that features Arthur Machen, Austin Osman Spare, an alternative world that is more real than ours, bookstores, crime and a city traumatized by the war. And he does this with fun, with challenging and beautiful writing, with delight and with the knowledge that there are portals and only a few can access them. This is a weird book and it's a complete joy. The Great When is a corker . . . Moore is entirely in charge here, confident and witty and pulling us along. The Great When is the first book in The Long London Quintet. If you read it, that fact will make you very happy indeed. In his expansive and ambitious new novel, The Great When, Alan Moore pens a love letter to art, literature and London that’s sure to capture readers’ imaginations . . . He illuminates every little detail of a London reeling from the end of the war, and his joy in doing so is palpable; this book is as much a celebration of our London as it is the creation of a new one. Characters are so vividly rendered that you can practically see them in full-color illustrations . . . Readers seeking big ideas and colorful splashes of language will love exploring The Great When—and look forward to future entries in the Long London series. I’m not sure there’s a God, but I thank Her for Alan Moore. One of the most significant fiction writers in English . . . Moore’s influence can be felt everywhere—in our literature, on our screens, in our politics. Moore makes the parochial universal, the mundane sublime and the temporal never-ending. A dynamite story collection . . . remarkable. Expand reviews