Plot (from Wikipedia):
"Richard Mayhew, a Scot living in London encounters an injured girl named Door on the street one night. Despite his fiancée's protests he decides to help her, but that unfortunately also means that he suddenly ceases to exist for regular people and becomes real only to the denizens of 'London Below', whose inhabitants are generally invisible and non-existent to the people of 'London Above'. He loses his house, his job and nearly his mind as he travels London Below in an attempt to make sense out of it all, find a way back, and helps Door survive as she is hunted down by hired assassins."
My favourite author, Patrick Rothfuss, strongly recommended this book. As a result I was always going to give it a go. The actual blurb itself seemed promising.
I hated it. From the annoying, whinging main character, to the one dimensional supporting cast, to the 'downtown-voice' dialog. It simply didn't appeal to me. Tori Amos (the singer) said she was over the moon about the book, and the characters were a part of her life. Well, as a person who places deep character development over plot, I was bitterly disappointed. I wonder if Ms. Amos even reads much. Let alone fantasy. Let alone urban fantasy.
True, Gaiman writes with wit and imagination, and the plot of the book was certainly noteworthy, and he's still a living legend for having penned The Sandman (one of the few graphic novels I intend to re-buy to keep in my personal library). The whole thing just wasn't what it could have been. The relationships between the characters, rather than being complex and involving, were vague and unsatisfying: is Richard attracted to door? well, lets see, he's not sure, let's not explore this avenue because we need to get to the next fancy location. While we do that, Richard will just prattle on about how bad things are for him so we feel sorry for him. Oh wait, we don't. He's annoying.
I hate to rag on a critically acclaimed book so much, against a writer who is so accomplished and has produced many other great works. Let's face it I'm not an international best seller. I just think that if someone like Patrick Rothfuss or Jennifer Fallon ever penned a similar novel, it would be a much more rounded text.
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