As a bit of a warning, this post might just include a few spoilers.
As for me, Richard just seemed like a tag along weakling for the first part of the book. Came off as someone who had no idea what trouble he was getting into, nor how to deal with it. I say that the term lost would be the correct term for him at the beginning. Now Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar was creepy. It took me a bit to realize who their employer was. Let’s just say that when this being goes bad, they go real bad and might not be the brightest to let Door have the upper hand. Oops, did I give a few spoilers there? Now, the trader is not exactly who one may think, but when it becomes clear who they are, it is like a stab in the back. What I was not expecting was what happened to Richard. Let’s just say that I was not expecting the choice that he made at the end. If you enjoyed the book and looking for a bit more entertaining, here is a nasty thought. How much, if any, of this book took place in Richard’s head? I know that there was the key scene where he had to meet up with the monks and the scene at the end where he meets up with his office mates, and his friends at the bar. Here is a spoiler. People thought he took a vacation, or went crazy for a time per say. As for Door, she just really came off as someone that just was used to get things moving in the right direction or that is how it seemed at times. Beyond that, there just is not much there when it comes to Door as far as I can tell. Found it interesting that just a hint to what happened to Atlantice was given in just one scene in the book without anyone asking to many questions. Quick spoiler, Anasthasia is the one that was takened by the night right? Poor girl indeed, but she might not be dead. The key word there is might, and @stasp I can see why you would like Door. From my view, that is one character that can be filled out a bit more. She is likeable though.

Neverwhere is a personal favourite of mine.
I first was introduced to it when the 1996 miniseries aired in the UK< an adaptation which is still a favourite , actually while the 2013 radio play wasn't bad, imho the miniseries worked rather better, mostly because much of the book was written at the same time that Gaiman wrote the series, so a lot of the moments, actors and reactions worked the same way.

it actually is sort of a half way house between novelisation, and adaptation.

Myself, I actually liked the way Richard developed as a character, starting out as a typical corporate cog, dominated by his beautiful, but very bitchy girlfriend, and then after actually doing the unthinkable and offering help to a homeless person in trouble, he winds up involved with something he just is totally unprepared for, then rises to a lot of challenges (what he goes through to get the key is pretty horrible), and finally goes home, only to realise that going home was just not what he wanted.

Personally the hole thing with Anaesthesia worked for me, since it just shows how dam harsh this world that Richard has stumbled into really is.
The point when the Marquis says to Richard "If you make it through the first day, you might survive as long as a month," is actually almost a true representation of just how dangerous the world of London below is, for people who don't really know the rules or where to go.

It's really a perfect hero story, there's not much else to say, oh, and I never think of the gap under underground trains quite the same way again .

My favourite character is probably the Marquis decarabas, who is just so dam awesome, and also has a totally unexpected plot, but quite honestly, there is little to think of that is negative about neverwhere, and no characters I thought were superfluous.

obviously, there is a lot unanswered, what the debt was the Marquis Owed door's family, Whether Door's sister is actually alive or not, who croop and vandamar really are etc, but that's just the mark of a good fantasy, it's a complex dark world and we always get there is more under the surface.

Btw, there is a story which serves as a coda of sorts. "how the marquis got his coat back", which shows a bit more of London below including the Elephant of Elephant and castle, and the shepherds of shepherds bush.
Door and Richard make brief appearences, but it's mainly a Marquis story, which is why it featured in the collection Rogues, edited by George R R Martin, though I believe it's also available as a single story edition as well.

Gaiman has said a novel length sequel entitled the seven sisters is planned, and apparently he's even writing it, which would be all sorts of awesome!

Hi,

If you enjoy books with a female protagonist and are looking for new books, I’d recommend the dark Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan, The Magicians Guild I believe is the first book in the series. you mentioned you enjoyed the harry potter series, although these books are different they do share similarities such as the main female protagonist discovering she possesses magical powers she doesn’t know about. there are other similarities too, but I don’t want to spoil the books,  personally I really enjoyed the series. Thanks for the recommendation of neverwhere, I’m always on the look out for new books so I’ll check this one out.

Paul Lemm

Yeah. I've already watched the first two episodes.

Glad your liking the miniseries, as I said, to me it's an old friend.
The radio play had some nice bits, but in general I just prefer the way the miniseries did things, EG the angel sounding far more nice, and Vandamar being scottish.

@lemm, I'm afraid I wasn't as crazy on Trudy Canavan's black magician trilogy myself. The style I felt cumbersome, and Sonea as a protagonist I found frustrating much of the time, since mostly she just sat and calculated and waited for other people to act before her, while she wayed up whether she liked them or not, it made her quite a cold and calculating character rather than the tough, scrappy street kid I think Canavan intended.
I also I really didn't like where she ended up romantically, although the series in general did get better as it went on, and the third book was mostly all sorts of awesome, indeed I've had a mind to reread the series plus the sequel trilogy just on the strength of the third book even if it means wading through the other two.

If you want a book with an amazingly awesome female protagonist I'd recommend skyward by brandon sanderson.
It's a scifi novel about a planet under constant invasions, the main character is a girl who wants to be a pilot, but is fighting against the fact that her father was a coward who allowed a major defeat to happen.

It's first in a trilogy, and my lady and I will be going on to the second two as soon as Sanderson bringgs out the third book next year.

I can also recommend, if you like weird fantasy dealing with our own world and a hidden world, the library at mount char by Scott Hawkins, one of the best books by a new writer I've read for a while.

It's about a woman called Caralyn who basically is a librarian at a library outside reality run by a godlike, and very cruel entity.

More than that I can't really say, since the book is really hard to classify as either fantasy, horror, apocalypse or something else.
Find my reviews for both of these books here on fantasybookreview.co.uk,  along with all the other book reviews I've written, including one for Niel Gayman's Stardust.

10 I was talking about the second choice. I was thinking that he would go for the first choice seeing how bad he wanted it, and how well it would have had tied things up in a ok way. His last choice to go back under was pretty good though. Him opening the door to do so was interesting. It happening in his head would be a good way to play with your mind wouldn't it? To me, him talking to his friend before he went and made his last choice is basicly where I got that idea from, but that may just be on how it appeared...

If we want to talk about Mieville, and you want a sort of Neverwhere vibe, Kraken is also a good one. For some definition of good.  I enjoy it if I'm in the right mood.

For a "cities are weird and we all just don't notice" sort of thing: I will recommend Matthew Swift by kate Griffin for any reason whatsoever, but it actually fits here.  It's very much higher power/action/whatever, and the main character is certainly not lost in another world, but it's got a lot of the poetic/dream vibe and is, honestly, not at all what the description of it would have you believe.

My favorite Gaiman is Ocean at the End of the Lane, but if you've only just found him and you haven't done a lot of urban fantasy/horror stuff, American Gods is well-known for a reason.  But the middle is a slog, and he definitely hit his stride as an author later.

Going further afield, The Night Circus by Morgenstern is very Gaiman-esk.  But long, slow to start, and--for lack of a better way to put it--much, much more adult than anything gaiman has ever written.  Not as in "they all have sex" or anything like that, it's kind of hard to put it into words what I mean when I say adult here.  In Neverwhere Richard goes off and has a "adventure" if you will, in the way that a YA protagonist would, just grown up; and for most of Gaiman's work, that's what happens.  But Night Circus is more they have lives and those lives happen to have adventure in them.

So i went a bit in to HP wibes again, and started reading magisterium. Seems nice so far, all be it i dont thing adults would enjoy it very much because of the simple fact its written more for children. I'm enjoying it so far though.

Hi,

@ Jayde and Camlorn, thanks for the recommendations. Whilst looking for Neverwhere yesterday I did stumble across American gods, which I downloaded since I’ve heard lots of people talk about that one before. Regarding Matthew Swift, years ago I remember someone recommending this, she said it was one of her favourite books/authors (I think it was a madness of angels, or wolves of something or other), I’d totally forgotten about the recommendation until you mentioned it here, so I’ll definitely check that one out, now you’ve reminded me of it.
@Dark, I actually didn’t realise there was a prequel or sequel to the dark magician Trilogy, I’ll definitely check that out. I did read another of her book Series I think called ‘Age of five’ which I didn’t enjoy as much as the dark Magician Trilogy. If you do get round to re-reading the series and reviewing the dark Magician Trilogy I’d be really interested in reading the review.
On a final note, since Brandon Sanderson has come up a couple of times, I’ve recently read Arcanum Unbounded,  which is a book filled with short stories by Sanderson which  connect some of his worlds/book series together. There are a couple of interesting short stories in there with female protagonists. in the first short story of the book I liked the main female character but also enjoyed the magic systems he uses (in fact I think good magic systems is something he does really well as an author). One of the short Stories in the book is ‘Mistborn: The secret history’, as a mist born fan I really enjoyed this, you see the mist born trilogy play out again but from a different angle /perspective  and its clever how some of the stuff which happens in this story directly affects what happens in the actual trilogy, in fact I had to read mist born again after reading this to see how it all tied together with the extra knowledge   the  secret history gave, it also has Kelsier as the main character of the book, which I enjoyed since I really liked his character in the series. When I read a brief description of what the Misborn secret history was about I was a little dubious around the concept/idea, but in fact I think Brandon Sanderson does a great job of it and for fans of the mist born series and Vin  it’s a really interesting read, clever how he must have had this  book planned whilst making the original trilogy, in the words of Kelsier ‘There’s always another secret’!. A word of warning though, the secret history contains a lot of spoilers for mist born, so it’s definitely not recommended before reading the original Mistborn Trilogy, there are also some spoilers for the sequel wax and Wane series set in the same world.

Paul Lemm

@Lem,  Magic systems are sort of what Sanderson does in general and something he's good at. I will say, while I have enjoyed all of his books I haven't found them all equal.
I loved Skyward, but for a revelation about the protagonist that occurred in the book (see my review on fantasybookreview.co.uk for a full discussion).

Mistborn was amazing in the first book, dragged a bit in the second and third but came together well, though I was less keen on the Wax and Wane series set later, since while the world was interesting, the characters and over all plot seemed to get going less, plus there were some characters I just plane was less keen on.
Also, I personally was less a fan of the secret history's take on Mistborn, since I personally prefer dead characters to stay dead, and am not really into character resurrection unless there is a really good reason.

I loved Arcanum unbounded generally as a collection, albeit it was annoying that it was recounted from the pov of Crystlia from white sands which is a graphic novel series and thus inaccessible (thanks Sanderson), though I did recently hear an audio drama of the first white sands book from Graphic audio which explained who she was at least.

With Sanderson's other stuff, Warbreaker and the Stormlight archive are truly amazing, Rythmetist was a bit disappointing but fun as far as it went, Elantris was definitely a first novel unfortunately, and I confess while I read the reckoners and they were okay, interesting for the powers but disappointing in  characters, , while the Rhythmetist was interesting for the world, but really needs a sequel to make it complete, while I confess I didn't care for the two legion novellas, mostly because the main character is a bit in love with himself and a bit of an arse.

Unfortunately, I'm getting to the point where Sanderson's familiar character tropes are a bit obvious, he likes martially compitant underdog male characters with a leader complex, and schollarly females with a habbit of mouthing off at inconvenient times.
That's why Skyward was a breath of fresh air, since Spin felt like a new character, and also why the graphic audio white sands was a trifle disappointing, since the protagonists there just felt like a redux of Caladin and Shalon without their interesting backstory or quirks.

@22
I wouldn't know. I hate audiobooks because I pleasure read at 400 words a minute or so.