I didn't like Neverwhere on first reading, and I only recently went back to it. It's a lot better; I don't know what I didn't like. Anyway, a standard Joe Everyman character discovers London Below, a typical Gaimanian version of London existing coincident with the normal one but full of weird urban fantasy characters, half of whom are tied by name into London history -- there are characters named Old Bailey and Islington (an angel), Shepherd's Bush has actual shepherds in it, etc. Slightly surprisingly, Richard really is Joe Everyman and doesn't turn out to have mystical powers or whatever. Croup and Vandemar fit the fairly standard "two bad guys, the thin ratty clever one and the big tough one" archetype played to by Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, Hale and Pace, Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, and so on, but they're also genuinely worrying in places, and the final denoument was surprising to me at least and well executed.
I didn't like Neverwhere on first reading, and I only recently went back to it. It's a lot better; I don't know what I didn't like. Anyway, a standard Joe Everyman character discovers London Below, a typical Gaimanian version of London existing coincident with the normal one but full of weird urban fantasy characters, half of whom are tied by name into London history -- there are characters named Old Bailey and Islington (an angel), Shepherd's Bush has actual shepherds in it, etc. Slightly surprisingly, Richard really is Joe Everyman and doesn't turn out to have mystical powers or whatever. Croup and Vandemar fit the fairly standard "two bad guys, the thin ratty clever one and the big tough one" archetype played to by Mr Wint and Mr Kidd, Hale and Pace, Mr Pin and Mr Tulip, and so on, but they're also genuinely worrying in places, and the final denoument was surprising to me at least and well executed.