Alan Moore, the screenwriter of From Hell and V for Vendettadefinitely a writer, inaugurates an “urban fantasy” saga taking place in an alternative, parallel and slightly bloated version of London.
Have you read Meditations in the streets of the metropolisabout a long but strange walk through London, a book written by the Reverend Thomas Hampole? Of course not, since this imaginary text does not exist -it is just mentioned in a news story, Comfortably furnished roomwritten by someone else. This book which does not exist, the young Dennis Knuckleyard, who lives and works in 1949 in a second-hand bookstore in the English capital, does have a copy thoughwhich he has just unearthed from a bibliophile who is also very strange and extremely paranoid, and for good reason: he knows that this book which should not be one, he found it in the “Grand When”, a parallel version of Londonin another dimension and another reality which until now was only accessible to a few. A London where time has been abolished, where all eras mix and where the marvelous constantly rubs shoulders with reality. Here, these are the Arcana, powerful and often malicious symbolic entitieswho reign over the city and its lower reaches. Summoned to bring back this book which should never have left the Great When, Dennis, accompanied by a small troop as iconoclastic as this Great When itself, sets out to attack this New World which now threatens the Ancient. Of this quest through “ the secret vertebrae of the city« sous « the fading light of English magic »we will have, only after almost 400 pages, an already complex first impression. This Big When is only the first volume of an ambitious fantasy saga which will include at least five, called Long London by Alan Moore, more English, fierce and pert than ever. A perfect summary of his obsessions, his creative madness and his impossibility of keeping things simple. And destined to become, who knows, the new English fantasy saga that global entertainment is demanding.
Less is not Moore
For Alan Moore connoisseurs and fans, no surprises and only happiness: the man who revolutionized adult comics for 30 years with “one shots” that have become cult remains true to himself by tackling fantasy literature this time. We find there his London obsessions (Jack The Ripper is not far away), his polished language, his taste for darkness, labyrinthine intrigues or psychogeography, his fierce humor, and his very British references to Moorcock, Catling or Orwell. For everyone else, this Big When reads like an astonishing blend of erudition and elements borrowed from both Harry Potter and the Marvel multiverse. No surprise then that it is the publishing house Bloomsbury, already publisher of Harry Potterwho signed Moore’s contract: she intends to find in this Big When his new big franchise.
