Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

Scary, spooky, sexy, sad, sadistic, silly short stories - don't read them before you go to sleep!

I seem to be in the minority on this collection. I had high hopes for this Smoke and Mirrors, but left it fairly disappointed. Don't get me wrong . . . Gaiman clearly has a fecund imagination, and a powerful grasp of the use of imagery, and at his best seamlessly blends dark fantasy with the very funny. But I found little of this as compelling as American Gods (which I rather liked),...more

I seem to be in the minority on this collection. I had high hopes for this Smoke and Mirrors, but left it fairly disappointed. Don't get me wrong . . . Gaiman clearly has a fecund imagination, and a powerful grasp of the use of imagery, and at his best seamlessly blends dark fantasy with the very funny. But I found little of this as compelling as American Gods (which I rather liked), for example. There were several strong stories in the collection, including a couple that I rated as 8s ("Shoggoth's Old Peculiar," which I found quite funny, and "Snow, Glass, Apples," after the reading of which I will never quite think of a famous fairy tale the same again), and several that I rated 7s ("Murder Mysteries" would have been an 8, were it not marred by the inclusion of a completely gratuitous and overly graphic little sex scene). But others of the stories left me very flat. I could easily have done without "Don't Ask Jack," "Changes," "Looking for the Girl," "The Sweeper of Dreams," "Foreign Parts," and "Tastings." And I would characterize the poetry as strong on imagery, but fairly pedestrian on word-smithing.   hide

Gaiman's first collection of short stories, and my favorite. Best stories: Snow, Glass, Apples and The Price. Ooo The Price. So scary!

This book gave me permission to write more edgy material in my own writing. Wide range of approaches to each story. Read this on a cruise when I was relaxed - opened up a lot of space in my head. Good reading if you want to get out of your mental rut of how you see things.