Neil Gaiman

Every time Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar came on scene, I cringed. Their character portrayals are so creepy and well done, that I’ve read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman several times to study his two villains. Plus, the story is dang good.

It is easy to empathize with the main character, Richard, and get lost in Neil’s nightmarish world. I enjoyed this story. A lot. Very imaginative and different.

Neverwhere uses the plot devise of falling into a fantasy world from our world. Other famous examples are Alice in Wonderland, Narnia, Wizard of Oz, Phantom Tollbooth, the Thomas Covenant series and many, many more. I think the idea of doorways to other worlds is intrinsically appealing. Fantasy is escape. Being able to walk into a different reality, well, there’s nothing more escapish than that.

Neverwhere‘s underground world is dark and garish. Yet it is also wonderful and teaches us about the actual world and our natures.

This is definitely a book I recommend reading.

It is the story of Richard Mayhew, a young London businessman with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he discovers a girl bleeding on the sidewalk. He stops to help her—an act of kindness that plunges him into a world he never dreamed existed. Slipping through the cracks of reality, Richard lands in Neverwhere—a London of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels that exists entirely in a subterranean labyrinth. Neverwhere is home to Door, the mysterious girl Richard helped in the London Above. Here in Neverwhere, Door is a powerful noblewoman who has vowed to find the evil agent of her family’s slaughter and thwart the destruction of this strange underworld kingdom. If Richard is ever to return to his former life and home, he must join Lady Door’s quest to save her world—and may well die trying.