Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

The problem with collections of this sort is how uneven they tend to be, but there are moments when Gaiman's talent shines; moments, even, of brilliance. Still, it is largely merely “pretty good” with the occasional outright misfire. I loved Neverwhere and Coraline when I was young, and this collection, while it did not bowl me over, has convinced me that I should revisit Gaiman as a novelist now, in my 30s.

I picked this one for Libro.fm's audiobook challenge prompt “Narrated by your favorite narrator”. Neil Gaiman will always be one of my favorite everythings. While I don't love the short stories as much as I have his novels, there is still so much here to revel in.

DNF. Maybe not forever, but certainly for awhile.


I made it halfway through this before I realized there was not a single story, not a single moment, not a single anything that interested me or made me feel anything at all. Complete apathy.

Maybe the second half has better stories, but I'm trying to get better at not slogging through stuff that isn't working for me.

I'm frustrated! Frustrated, I say! It took me exactly one entire month to finish this book, and I didn't like it as much as I expected to. In fact, I would be giving it 2 stars if it weren't for the last two stories. Two stars. Neil Gaiman. Two. Stars. See? Frustrated.

I've had lots of people telling me how hit-or-miss Gaiman can be, how his stories' formula starts to get old after a while, but I didn't quite believe that. I mean I hadn't seen this in Neil Gaiman at all—until now. See, it's not that S&M's stories are bad, they're just... weak. Meh. So so. Wishy-washy. Come on, it's Neil fucking Gaiman we're talking about, I sure as Hell expected more than wishy-washy. Also, I'm not sure that I got them? Maybe I'm being paranoid, but the point went way over my head in some.

The two very last stories saved it for me: Murder Mysteries, and Snow, Glass, Apples. Snow, Glass, Apples was, in fact, the reason I picked S&M up, to begin with—and I was terrified it would suck. It didn't. I'm happy.

Histórias muito boas. Histórias muito más. Gaiman tem muitas qualidades, mas a consistência não será uma delas.

Not my favorite by Neil Gaiman - feels more like “let's publish SOMETHING as people so want to read what I write”. He isn't bad, so it wasn't waste of time, and there were some jewels in the book - I especially love the Creation story backwards. _