Books like Neverwhere
What should you read after Neil Gaiman’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Neil Gaiman
- 1996
- Urban fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Neverwhere
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
A hidden world running by its own rules just out of everybody's sight, and the same conviction that the best places are the ones you stumble into after dark.
- A city underneath the city
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- Becoming invisible to everyone
- Romance-forward, slow plot
Great matchThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
An ordinary, faintly hopeless young man discovers the magic is real and immediately finds it does not fix him. Gaiman's premise with the whimsy scraped off.
- An ordinary man pulled in
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- Dry British humour
- Leads unlikeable by design
Great matchThe Ten Thousand Doors of January
Alix E. Harrow
Doors that open onto elsewhere, and a girl who has been looked straight through her whole life finally arriving somewhere she counts.
- Becoming invisible to everyone
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- A city underneath the city
- Historical, with epistolary layers
Best for the English magicJonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
Magic returned to England and treated as a national institution — footnotes, rivalries, a faerie court with dreadful manners. Clarke shares Gaiman's straight face, at four times the length.
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- Dry British humour
- Two very polite villains
- 1,000 pages, glacial pace
Great matchThe Golem and the Jinni
Helene Wecker
Two beings out of other traditions making a life in 1899 New York, invisible in plain sight. The city-as-secret-world pleasure, more tender than strange.
- Becoming invisible to everyone
- A city underneath the city
- Historical and slow-building
Great matchThe Hazel Wood
Melissa Albert
Fairy-tale logic leaking into modern New York, working on the same rule Gaiman uses: stories are dangerous, and they will use you if you let them.
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- A guide you can't quite trust
- An ordinary man pulled in
- YA voice and pacing
Great matchThe Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern
An underground world reached through a door you should not have opened, built out of libraries and honey. Everything Neverwhere does with the Underside, taken further down.
- A city underneath the city
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- Structure is deliberately loose
Great matchA Darker Shade of Magic
V.E. Schwab
Four Londons stacked on top of one another, each with its own rules — the familiar-city-made-strange trick you enjoyed, with considerably more swashbuckling.
- A city underneath the city
- An ordinary man pulled in
- A guide you can't quite trust
- Trilogy with a romance arc
Great matchThe Shadow of the Wind
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Barcelona with a secret architecture underneath it, and a young man pulled into somebody else's dangerous story by one object he should have left alone.
- A city underneath the city
- An ordinary man pulled in
- Two very polite villains
- Literary mystery, not fantasy
Best for the plot mechanicsThe Invisible Library
Genevieve Cogman
A librarian-spy stealing books across alternate Londons, with the brisk jokey competence Gaiman gives Door and the Marquis when the plot needs moving.
- A city underneath the city
- Dry British humour
- Tube station names made literal
- Lighter and more disposable
Worth a look — with a warningThe Bear and the Nightingale
Katherine Arden
Household spirits still living in the corners of a world that has stopped believing in them — Gaiman's forgotten London, relocated to medieval Rus.
- Becoming invisible to everyone
- Fairy-tale logic in a modern city
- Slow, historical, Russian setting
Worth a look — with a warningThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
Here for the pleasure of being led through a strange world by a narrator enjoying himself enormously. Otherwise it is a very different and much longer proposition.
- A guide you can't quite trust
- An ordinary man pulled in
- Epic fantasy, 660 pages
Best for the underworld societyThe Lies of Locke Lamora
Scott Lynch
A criminal city with its own courts, oaths and etiquette, run by people far too charming about what they are doing to you. Croup and Vandemar would fit right in.
- Two very polite villains
- A city underneath the city
- Dry British humour
- Considerably more violent
What should you read after Neverwhere?
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern — a hidden world running by its own rules just out of everybody's sight, and the same conviction that the best places are the ones you stumble into after dark.
If what stayed with you was an ordinary man pulled in, read The Magicians by Lev Grossman instead: an ordinary, faintly hopeless young man discovers the magic is real and immediately finds it does not fix him. Gaiman's premise with the whimsy scraped off. The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow is the other strong option — doors that open onto elsewhere, and a girl who has been looked straight through her whole life finally arriving somewhere she counts.
Loved something else?
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