The opening instalment in the Long London series, The Great When finds the creative genius behind Watchmen, From Hell and Jerusalem weave an intricate tale of sorcerers, booksellers and the occult in a mystical version of the capital.
A dark and beguiling tour through the streets of a magical London by the Sunday Times bestselling master of modern fantasy, Alan Moore
The year is 1949, the city London. Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, on an errand to retrieve rare books, Dennis discovers that one of them does not exist. It is a fictitious book, yet it is physically there in his hands nonetheless. How? It comes from the Great When, a dark and magical version of the city that is beyond time. There, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur. If Dennis does not take this book back to the other London, he will be killed.
So begins a journey delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, many of whom have their own nefarious intentions. Soon Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may alter and endanger both Londons.
Mystical, magnificently written and hilarious, The Great When is Moore’s most imaginative work yet and the first in the fantastic new Long London series.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526643223
Number of pages: 336
Dimensions: 234 x 153 x 28 mm
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 Enríquez, author of OUR SHARE OF NIGHT
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 humor ... This is a lavishly crafted urban fantasy tale with a caustic and colorful 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. - The Guardian
A portent of even greater wonders yet to come - Times Literary Supplement
What a wonder this book is! Just when I thought that the fantasy wells of London had run dry comes this magnificent and unexpected treasure, opening up London as a new battleground in an uncertain clash with a macabre... More
I am both familiar with and a huge fan of Alan Moore’s graphic novels; most notably The League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, weaving the English culture of literature into reality. This book has its roots in that, but... More
Thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing for a review copy.
The premise of this book was irresistible, a hapless 18 year old with a lethal magical book on the streets of not one but two versions of London – what’s not to...
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