Lateral Shift? Patience and Pages?

I'm enjoying Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.

I recall reading it some years back and finding it rather thin, but now--and after reading and appreciating Gaiman's nonfiction collection The View from the Cheap Seats in one long session on a trans-Atlantic flight--I'm finding Neverwhere a fine novel.

Is this a matter of patience?  Of being willing to listen to the novel and its voices?


P.S.  I even picked up a copy of Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane today.  (I bought a used copy of the trade paperback instead of a new and cheaper pocket-sized paperback because I'd noticed that Gaiman was using longish sentences and short paragraphs often enough that somehow read better in that larger sized trade paperback.)

Of course, I have enjoyed (twice) Gaiman's American Gods.

 Finally, I enjoyed this paragraph from early in Neverwhere, though that enjoyment came from seeing the author's (and the reader's?) self-projection in this description:

     "Yes, thank you," said Richard.  He was a fresh-faced, boyish 
     young man, with dark, slightly curly hair and large hazel 
     eyes; he had a rumpled, just-woken-up look to him, which 
     made him more attractive to the opposite sex than he 
     would ever understand or believe.