Reviews

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman

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moshalala's review against another edition

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Overdue

novaturient_bibliophile's review against another edition

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4.0

Neil is just so relatable in that he’s a writer and has all of my writerly problems and feelings, which makes for some great quotes. There were a lot of good…I don’t know, galaxy brained (?) ideas throughout the book, which made the stories really fascinating and entertaining. However, some of the stories were kind of difficult to follow or seemed a bit redundant to me. Most of them were wonderful, though. Neil is very good at creating fluent images for readers, which I love. It’s also very satisfying to understand what he’s getting at, but I’m not gonna lie, the introduction was one of my favorite parts. There were just so many brilliant quotes.
This reminded me of Charles Bukowski and Oscar Wilde’s writing (and obviously Neil’s other works).

dishuel's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Some of the stories are better than others but worth the read.

gemstonejasper's review against another edition

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3.75

I think it's hard to review short story collections because in most cases, some stories are going to hit for you and some will miss. Overall, I think this was a good collection.

Some of my favorites that I thought about after finishing:
Nicholas Was...
Troll Bridge
The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories
When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11¼
Murder Mysteries
Snow, Glass, Apples

The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories + Murder Mysteries were the two 5 star stories for me