The Great When

Reviews / Votes

Think Terry Pratchett writing one of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London novels - but still unmistakeably Alan. This has 'massive hit' written all over it -- John Higgs 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 -- Mariana Enriquez, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT Extraordinary . . . very funny . . . It does what fantasy does best which is show us something beyond our experience -- Susanna Clarke, New York Times bestselling author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell 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 -- Iain Sinclair A profound, gorgeous novel of secret magics and lost souls -- Sunyi Dean, Sunday Times Bestselling author of THE BOOK EATERS [Moore's] lyrical style is a play of poetry and metaphor with a dash of dry humour ... This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colourful cast, perfect for fans of Susanna Clarke * Library Journal * What Alan Moore has done is written a powerful, imaginative and beautiful battering ram that blasts through the narrow, static vision of the world we have today. At a time when we are told there is nothing else, that this is it - now and forever - The Great When opens the door to the thrilling idea that there could be all kinds of other worlds and other possibilities. That there could be something else beyond. And he does it funny and beautifully -- Adam Curtis A masterful step from one of our very best, uncompromising storytellers; Moore peels back the layers of London and reveals not only the history we know, but the histories that could have been, and, underneath it all, both the dark and beautiful truths about who we are as a nation -- Heather Parry The worldbuilding is extraordinary and the plot is utterly gripping. Readers are sure to be sucked in * Publishers Weekly * A masterful storyteller... [Moore] turns his impressive imagination towards London.. [his] exuberant prose demands we see the magic and beauty that are intertwined with the mundane life of the city * City AM * It's a romp, full of loving attention to the past * Sunday Times * The horror and ghastly beauty of this nether-realm are vigorously conveyed by Moore, while his evocation of the post-war capital, all bombsites, deprivation and grubby behaviour, is wonderfully immersive... a heady tumble of language, full of allusions and ripe adjectives * Financial Times * In The Great When, [Moore's] language is inflamed, a beautiful riot. Onomatopoeia, rhyming slang, wicked anachronisms, slap-happy metaphors: this is the antidote to the Ozempic prose of modern, MFA-incubated novellas * Guardian * A portent of even greater wonders yet to come * Times Literary Supplement *