On Books: Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

So I've finished piles and piles of books since starting this blog, and have I done a review of any of them?

No. No I have not.

It seems like every time I finish a book, I feel like I should digest it a bit more, ponder the themes, and maybe brush up on a few bits before I tackle it in writing. This, it seems, is a grievous error, since I never seem to get around to the actual tackling.

So tackle I must! And Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere is a great start.

I love Neil Gaiman. He's got this fantastically whimsical writing style that still manages to jar with his casual descriptions of violence and harsher realities. In Neverwhere he takes a secret, mystical underworld of London, called London Below, and throws in an extraordinarily boring and doofish businessman named Richard.

Richard meets Door (yes, that's her name) bleeding on a sidewalk and, to the chagrin of his flaming bitch of a fiance, takes her home and tries cleaning her up. The next morning, after some craziness with a bird and a rat and a mystical marquee character, Door disappears and Richard goes invisible. Taxis don't stop for him, his apartment is rented out right in front of him, his flaming bitch of a fiance barely recognizes him after he chases her down, his job doesn't exist anymore. As Richard rejoins Door and the marquee, he is drug through the sewers and the subway tunnels of the mysterious London Below, meeting strange creatures and running from psychotic killers.

It's not Neil Gaiman's best, but bear in mind I read American Gods first. That said, the main characters in this tale are multifaceted and interesting, it's hard to know for sure if you've got the good guys and the bad guys pegged until  the very end and I loved it. The protagonist, or at least that's what I'll label Richard as, is a lovable bumbling idiot who's afraid of heights; his charge is a generally terrified and mildly clueless teenage girl, and everybody else is suspect. Especially with this whole magic business, Neil can lead you by the nose for a chapter or two and then POOFfuckingmagic into a startling conclusion. There were a few moments where I thought he went a bit far with the POOFfuckingmagic but 99% of the time it was masterfully done. Amid all the action, London Below as written by Gaiman is at times carefully described and at others left as a blank canvas where you can fill in your own scary crap, making the whole backdrop of the story fraught with tension.

So yeah. Believable narrative, good flow, interesting characters, and a couple plot twists that actually twist. This one goes into the books-I-will-militarily-foist-on-my-friends pile.