Publisher Bloomsbury has now confirmed The Great When will release October 1, revealing the book's cover and blurb. The novel will follow second-hand bookseller Dennis Knuckleyard as he discovers that one of the rare books he's been asked to acquire doesn't exist, plunging him into the hidden magical underworld of London, known as the Great When. Now, fans get to see the full wraparound cover, exclusively shared by Entertainment Weekly, with Moore calling it "a small illustrative masterpiece that perfectly reflects the book's hallucinatory mood and storyline, along with that of the post-war decade the work is set in."

It's not the first time that Moore has explored London's secret history, with From Hell presenting a fictionalized of how secret societies have shaped the city's structure and purpose for nefarious ends. Moore has hinted in the past that the style of each Long London novel will be different, mirroring the period in which it is set. The Great When's summary reads:

Dennis Knuckleyard is a hapless eighteen-year-old who works and lives in a second-hand bookstore. One day, his boss and landlady, Coffin Ada, sends him to retrieve some rare books, one of which, Dennis discovers, should not exist. A London Walk by Rev. Thomas Hampole is a fictitious book that appears in a real novel by another author. Yet A London Walk is physically there in his hands, nonetheless.

Coffin Ada tells Dennis the book comes from the other London, the Great When, a version of the city that is beyond time. In the Great When, epochs blend and realities and unrealities blur, while concepts such as Crime and Poetry are incarnated as wondrous and terrible beings. But, Coffin Ada tells Dennis, if he does not return the book to this other London, he will be killed.

So begins Dennis' adventure in Long London. Delving deep into the city's occult underbelly and tarrying with an eccentric cast of sorcerers, gangsters, and murderers, Dennis finds himself at the center of an explosive series of events that may endanger both Londons.

Mystical, hilarious, and magnificently imagined, The Great When is an unforgettable introduction to the consciousness-altering world of Long London.

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Alan Moore's The Great When Explores London's Magical Secrets

Moore Calls the Series an "Excuse for Me to Excavate the City’s Secret Jewelry"

The Great When follows Moore's critically beloved Illuminations and Jerusalem, after the legendary creator swore off comics, decrying both his own treatment within the industry and the effects its biggest properties have had on culture, and stating that the primacy of figures like Batman in the public imagination "can very often be a precursor to fascism."

Moore has an immensely high standard for fantasy writing, and has said in the past that "I want to be almost lifted into a different neurology by a fantasy story. I want something that actually rewires my view of reality" - a standard which he doesn't feel genre heavyweights like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones meet. From both his philosophy around art and past work, readers can expect an elaborately crafted world rooted in meticulous research and no-holds-barred imagination. Speaking to EW, Moore explains the book is an attempt to unearth London's lost real-world stories and characters. He says:

The Long London quintet is an elaborate excuse for me to excavate the city's secret jewelry; the forgotten spaces, startling events, and fabulous neglected characters that are embedded in the place's blazing and unlikely history, but which seldom, if at all, see literary daylight. And it isn't only London that's examined here, but also London's progress through our previous eventful century, from the smoking rubble following the last World War to the precarious cliff-edge of the new millennium.

The series is a panorama of lost moments and elusive atmospheres, a range of alien facets to a grand metropolis that almost everyone assumes is already familiar to them. Indeed, considering the oddness of the narrative, I'd harbored doubts that any cover image could come close to accurately representing it. How wrong I was. The wraps of The Great When are a small illustrative masterpiece that perfectly reflects the book's hallucinatory mood and storyline, along with that of the post-war decade the work is set in. You can almost smell the coal-smoke and boiled cabbage. I hope that the prospective reader will be just as captivated by this riotous and uncanny urban walk as I myself have been, and look forward to bumping into them upon the eerie street-corners of The Great When. See you there.

Known for transforming comics with works like Watchmen, Alan Moore remains one of the foremost creative talents writing today, and any fan of fantasy will be counting down the days until The Great When lands on book store shelves and the Long London quintet officially begins.

The Great When is coming from Bloomsbury October 1, 2024.

Source: Bloomsbury, Entertainment Weekly