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.