Skip to main content

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Originally published in April 2005, on my original 52 Books blog.


I just finished reading this collection of short stories and poetry by Neil Gaiman. Previously, I had read Stardust, Neverwhere, American Gods, Good Omens (collaboration with Terry Pratchett) and the Sandman comics and enjoyed all of them, as well as his illustrated children’s books, Coraline and The Wolves in the Walls.

(I don't have the book with me, so there may be some errors in the story titles below.)


The stories and poems in this collection are mostly fantasy, and in fact there are stories for lovers of just about any subgenre of fantasy. You will find humorous stories (Chivalry, Bay Wolf, Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar), dark stories (Only the end of the world again, The White Road), supernatural stories (The wedding present, The daughter of owls, Black cat), weird stories (Eaten alive, The facts in the disappearance of Miss Finch), folkloric stories (Troll bridge, The white road, Snow, glass, apples), detective stories (Murder mysteries, Bay Wolf), horror stories (Snow, glass, apples, Eaten alive), vampire stories, werewolf stories. Gaiman plays with themes familiar from his novels and graphic novels: myths, legends and folktales, literature (Beowulf, HP Lovecraft, Oscar Wilde), popular culture, sex, blood, and death.

The stories and poems vary, but the overall quality is quite good. 3+ stars.
Labels:

Comments

Dorte H said…
I don´t read short stories often, but as I was highly impressed by Coraline, I am tempted.

I am also beginning to learn that if you are pressed for time, it´s a good idea to read short stories to review on your blog ;)
August 08, 2011 7:29 pm
Bibliophile said…
What I like best about collections like this one is that you can take as long as you like to finish them and not lose the thread.
August 09, 2011 12:51 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and
Post a Comment
Read more