It’s been 10 years since I first read Neverwhere. Then must have been the original publication version, but I’m not totally sure. I am certain I did not like it as much, when I finished reading it. I think I thought of it as a middling novel, the sort of quick adventure that should have gone on being more adventures without being more book. Somehow. I avoided this one for 10 years, and recently scooped up the author’s preferred text. Trust Neil, I thought to myself, much as I have in the 16 years since I first read American Gods. Well, this time, I love it. And enough reviews have said enough things about this wonderful, gothically dark urban fantasy that shuns whimsy and delights with biting humor and turns of violence amidst a storm of imagination. I must, and will, only say this: Richard Mayhew, I hated you and your adventure because you asked a question that a teenage me had not yet learned to appreciate. I know better now, and I ask it back, wherever you are. I hope the question will stop echoing and start answering.