THE GREAT WHEN

In 1949 London, a bookseller’s clerk stumbles into a secret, exceptionally dangerous aspect of his city.

Physically and emotionally awkward Dennis Knuckleyard is negotiating for a job lot of books written by occult author Arthur Machen when he falls into a weird sort of trap. One of those books is a dangerous metafiction: It’s an imaginary book that Machen refers to in one of his stories, but which shouldn’t exist independently. The unreal volume represents a breach into Long London, aka the “Great When” of the title, a theoretical landscape populated by archetypes and other strange, dangerous beings, and the philosophical foundation of material London. Finding both peril and assistance in unexpected places, Dennis must get the book back to Long London, and also facilitate a meeting between a crime kingpin and one of Long London’s denizens, the embodiment of crime itself. As always, Moore’s prose harks back to the New Wave movement of speculative fiction so prevalent in the 1960s and ‘70s; it’s strongly reminiscent of Michael Moorcock’s more experimental work. The style is well suited to the more hallucinatory passages depicting Long London; and yet, this novel is actually plotted more straightforwardly than one might expect of Moore, who usually delights in elaborate tangents. Though still grounded in cynicism, it also displays more faith in people than is typical for the author; while the setting is a grim post-war London featuring both human and inhuman monsters, the protagonist, Dennis, discovers multiple instances of kindness from complete strangers who have no obvious motivation to help him as much as they do. Moore is certainly far from the first to write about a magical London or a parallel London, but his evocation is well drawn and unique. This first installment of a projected series is clearly a prelude to something interesting—whatever it turns out to be—and solid indication that Moore, who is still mostly known for his iconic graphic novels (Watchmen, 1987, etc.), does not require an artist to paint a picture.

Dark, sordid, gritty, thrilling, and gorgeous in its own peculiar way.