My favorite Neil Gaiman book. The world he creates in the London underground is utterly amazing.

"Watch the gap." ( )

Neverwhere is the story of Richard, a good man who seems to be meandering through his life without much of his own purpose or direction. He is engaged to Jessica, an almost domineering woman who is happy to treat him as if he isn't good enough for her. Richard seems readily oblivious to her personality until he finds a bloody, beaten young woman lying on a London street on the way to a dinner with Jessica's boss. When he takes the decision to pick this unknown girl up and take her to his apartment where she can be safe, Jessica is furious and ends their engagement. He had no idea at the time that there would be such dangerous and complicated implications resulting from his decision to be a Good Samaritan. Whether Richard took his fiance's threat seriously, bringing Door back to his apartment alters his life forever. Door was from the London Below and as a result of his involvement with her and the two bounty hunters from Below, Richard is no longer a part of the London Above. Nor is he fully a part of Door's world. He needs to shake himself out of his sluggish approach to life in order to survive.

I am the type of person who loves to delight in the mayhem caused by the bad guys. It's nearly a love to hate type of situation. Not every dark character makes me feel this way, though. The miscreant must be crafty, intelligent, and have just a tad bit of an advantage over the hero or heroine. These are the malfeasants that force the hero or heroine to reach deep within themselves to rise to the occasion. As with The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman proves in Neverwhere that he is a master at bringing to live some of the most wonderful villains. Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemaar, London Below's most talented assassins tasked with the the apprehension and murder of Door, were nothing short of a delight for me. They kept Richard, Door, and Hunter on their toes and always kept a step ahead of them. Their cocky impatience brought a smile to my face and their dialog was in many ways the highlight of this novel for me.

The more I think ab0ut Neverwhere, the more I compare it to the basic storyline of the movie "The Wizard of Oz."

After taking action to help or protect someone else, both Richard and Dorothy find themselves in an unfamiliar world whose rules are foreign and oftentimes frightening.

Both novels include a small band of the most unlikely characters with their own motivations on the same dangerous quest at the request of a magical entity.

All Richard and Dorothy want is to go back home.

While there isn't always a direct connection between Dorothy and Richard, they both are forced to face their greatest fears from both the outside world and within themselves in order to survive these foreign worlds and keep any hope of ever returning home, a place they never fully appreciated in the first place. Without forcibly being removed from their comfort zones, they never would have lived up to their full potential. Dorothy would have spent her life on the farm dreaming of those better places over the rainbow while Richard would have continued to go through the motions of his life. Richard and Dorothy needed their journeys. It was their salvation.

This novel is the first book I've ever owned by Neil Gaiman. It was gifted to my by the lovely Jena from Muse Book Reviews. She sent it to me along with a copy of American Gods in hopes that I could get his autograph. Unfortunately, that never happened, but I treasured the book nonetheless. Now, I can also say that I treasure the story as well. I have found this month that I'm not too old for the fantastical. ( )

Never finished it....didn't like it at all.

Can't even remember what it was about, but a lot of murders and sci-fi....don't like sci-fi. ( )

I had to come home so I wanted a book to read on the train. I went to Janpath, an got this one from a little street bookshop. When I had set out to acquire a book, I had planned to buy both this one and AS Byatt's Possession, so when I got out of this little shop, I went up Janpath, and crossed over and walked down the road, and on a whim, went inside Cafe Coffee Day.

And this is a book you should read alone in a coffee shop, a plate of Chocolate Truffle in front of you. And as you tuck in the rich chocolate, and look forward to going home, you can savour dialouge such as*

I gave her my heart to keep, in case I lose it again.

Home is where my heart is. But my heart is here. I am home

If books had flavours, this one would be chocolate truffle, rich, chocolatey, comforting. Not like being home, which is somewhere between mildly boring and extremely annoying, but like coming home. Like first love, like memories of childhood, not like happiness, but like the promise of happiness, like a lovely dream which breaks your heart when you wake up.

But holding an actual book in your hand, the coarse pages of good quality recyclable paper, and the way they smell, sitting in an empty coffeeshop, walking down the road, lost to the world, in dreams which are both too silly and too pretty, being a teenaged girl again... there are times when you can believe in the dreams of your childhood, and there are times which are simply the best time you ever had.

And no, I won't recommend this, or mine, teenaged imagination to anyone, but this is the book I will end up writing if I was a writer. Because I too am unable to see the ugliness of suffering, the boringness of waiting. I too am young enough to believe that someone will wait from the age of 36 to 82, for one glimpse of her first love. Well I would like to believe that last one, I really would.

And this is the last illusion left, I still believe in true love. And the day I get married, I will have to give up o it, and then I will have nothing left to believe, nothing at all. ( )

Interesting and a page turner. Kept me company during my 2-wk stay in the US and whenever I was eating alone. Though Gaiman never really explained why ppl from London Above cannot notice the existence of ppl from London Below or ppl who had fallen between the cracks so to speak. Is it an arrangement from some Powers That Be and we will just have to accept it is so? Overall still a good read and I wouldn't mind reading more adventures of the Below. ( )