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.

Profile Pics: 5 + 6

Stromness Shots

That's a two-way street, by the way.
Motorists are very accommodating of each other in Orkney in particular and in Scotland in general.

Looking out from, more than at:
Stromness,
Orkney.

Orkney Kine

Orkney kine are not the hairy, furry Scottish cattle that one expects.  They are multicolored, or of various colors, not the ruddy shade you may expect.  And, cattle and sheep alike lie down (lay down--what's that rule?) to avoid the worst of the wind in ways that I am not used to with livestock.  I mean, some sheep and cattle flatten themselves like cats or dogs in the sun.

Abbey Vista

Jedburgh Abbey.

Blackness Castle

Orkney Vistas