Neverwhere

I found this book at the back of a shelf a couple of days ago. I read it back in 2013, before I wrote reviews, and had given it 4 stars. I vaguely remembered the story-line, but only just. So I thought I would read it quickly this weekend, so see whether it stacked up at 4 stars still.

And it did. Very easy to read, and still the only full length novel I have read by Gaiman, the story is clever and funny, the characters interesting and the writing easy to read. The story rolls out for the reader - it is no deep thinking novel, but an enjoyable urban fantasy story.

Set in London Below, making use of the London Underground tube stations for inspiration and settings, and riddled with historical tie-ins, mythology and . The main protagonist characters are a mixed bag who join together to complete a quest, aided by peripheral characters, and hindered mainly by masterful assassins Mr. Croup and Mr Vandemar.

There are many reviews which will set out the plot, so I will leave it here, with a few quotes I enjoyed.

“There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.”“I'm not scared of falling,' he told himself. ‘The bit I'm scared of is the bit where you stop falling, and start being dead.”“Sir. Might I with due respect remind you that Mister Vandemar and myself burned down the City of Troy? We brought the Black Plague to Flanders. We have assassinated a dozen kings, five popes, half a hundred heroes and two accredited gods. Our last commission before this was the torturing to death of an entire monastery in sixteenth-century Tuscany. We are utterly professional.