Neverwhere By Neil Gaiman

“You've a good heart. Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go. But mostly, it's not.”

The skin of routine is pulled tightly over your face, stifling the senses, compressing your creativity. Life is readily apparent. "Work. Home. The pub. Meeting girls. Living in the city. Life. Is that all there is?"

Beneath the normal and the mundane, lying just under the paved streets, sewers, and network of subways that carry Londoners to and from their apartments and appointments... is the real London Underground. Having slipped through the cracks of reality, people and those who aren't quite people, find themselves among the rubbish piles of lost things. In this undersociety, the inhabitants function by code of survival touched by a magical order of ancient rule. Unimposing Robert Mayhew is essentially unplugged from the matrix as his life spirals away from normality. Once trapped in this weird underworld, Robert must come to terms with his newfound nonexistence in order to try and escape with his life.

Masterful with this twisted fiction, Gaiman creates a protagonist carefully, almost lovingly, and then proceeds to completely disregard his safety, unceremoniously yanking him away from his nice, normal life, into the throws of dark, magical realism. Robert Mayhew tumbles through the laws of physics along side the only friend he has left in any world-- a strange girl seeking revenge. For lack of a better idea, he adopts her quest and begins to discover how real fear can be. In this place, the motley travelers encounter the reverse hierarchy of sewer rat lords and fragmented fiefdoms, forgetful kings and imprisoned angels. Floundering through the subterranean  universe, Robert must learn to defend himself from nightmarish monsters while trying to "do the right thing" amongst sinister creatures unbound by modest moral codes. Facing, betrayal, trickery, and mysticism, Robert faces physical and psychological tortures in the hopes of ultimate restoration.

Masterful. I give this flightful twist 6 out of 5 stars. Gaiman blew my mind with a metaphorical shotgun.

The Picture of Dorian Gray - by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde's depiction of life is all glamorous effluence during the 1890's. The characters you encounter are elegant in appearance and cynical in temperament. Their greatest foe is ennui, and their deepest fear is wrinkled, aged, quiet death. The book is stuffed full of witticisms and memorializations that summarize the world and its experiences into pithy epiphanies. They entertain one another so as not to let true emotion touch their unbothering hearts. Fear, I suspect, is what drives them through their carefree days. Fear of loving keeps each distant and happy and young.

And then, one day, a wish is granted to one, lovely Dorian Gray, who will never age another day of his life. Instead, he watches this experiences paint the face of his likeness, which he keeps secretly hidden. At first, it is his microscope, with which to observe with scientific detachment the changes that do not touch his soul. Drawn deeper daily are the lines and wrinkles of worry and regret that otherwise would be etched along his perfect face. But as this turns into an unfortunate obsession, we witness the price that Dorian pays to retain his youth and isolated, underdeveloped joy. Wilde writes for us a picture of how the soul, ripped form the body, leaves humanity to perform unspeakable deeds. When we are swept into the darkness of imagination, we can momentarily experience this contaminated mind before returning safely home. This philosophical fiction offers an enchanting and speculative metaphor to remind us of the preciousness of the soul and the Gothic horrors of our own destructive capabilities.

I give this book 3 out of 5 stars. It is entertaining and frequently quotable. However, only right at the very end does it become fascinating and compelling.