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kieralesley 's review for:
Smoke and Mirrors
by Neil Gaiman
Turns out I'm not as big a fan of Neil Gaiman's short fiction as I expected to be. All short story collections are uneven. An author's work is varied, taste is subjective, and some things are just better than others when viewed side-by-side.
Neil Gaiman, it turns out, is a bit of a different writer than I have previously encountered him to be. He has more breadth of subject matter, writing style, and themes than I have encountered before. He covers a lot of ground in this collection: poetry, Lovecraftian, strange urban fantasy/magical realism, broken relationships, cats, tiny stories, longer rambling ones, and I honestly wasn't expecting him to be so very varied. It was wonderful and I liked seeing Gaiman's fleeting ideas and the topics he obsesses over and in a way seeing how much bigger he is as a writer than I was aware of was fascinating.
Most of the these stories, though, I found boring or seemingly unfinished. I read the story, shrugged and moved on to the next one. They were vague thought experiments or half-finished rather than compelling stories which stood strongly on their own.
There was a lot of material, as well, that I found too close to the boundaries of my comfort to enjoy. There was lots here about young, broken relationships, objectifying sex, strange magics that had a bit too much to do with penises than I could care about, and I found some of the material in One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock actively upsetting. There's nothing wrong with these topics per se and if it was Stephen King or someone writing it I'd probably wince and keep reading, but for some reason my expectations for Gaiman's work were too narrow and these stories were far enough outside that expectation that they were off-putting - that's entirely on me and what I brought to the reading, but it doesn't change how I felt about the collection.
Highlight reads for me, included: Chivalry, We Can Get Them For You Wholesale, Murder Mysteries, and Snow, Glass, Apples. The best story in here, by a long way, is The Price. That's my takeaway brilliant story from this collection.
I think I just don't like Gaiman's short story style, or maybe I don't like his early short story style? I'm not sure, but the fact is I disliked more of these stories than I liked, though the ones I liked I really did.
Neil Gaiman, it turns out, is a bit of a different writer than I have previously encountered him to be. He has more breadth of subject matter, writing style, and themes than I have encountered before. He covers a lot of ground in this collection: poetry, Lovecraftian, strange urban fantasy/magical realism, broken relationships, cats, tiny stories, longer rambling ones, and I honestly wasn't expecting him to be so very varied. It was wonderful and I liked seeing Gaiman's fleeting ideas and the topics he obsesses over and in a way seeing how much bigger he is as a writer than I was aware of was fascinating.
Most of the these stories, though, I found boring or seemingly unfinished. I read the story, shrugged and moved on to the next one. They were vague thought experiments or half-finished rather than compelling stories which stood strongly on their own.
There was a lot of material, as well, that I found too close to the boundaries of my comfort to enjoy. There was lots here about young, broken relationships, objectifying sex, strange magics that had a bit too much to do with penises than I could care about, and I found some of the material in One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock actively upsetting. There's nothing wrong with these topics per se and if it was Stephen King or someone writing it I'd probably wince and keep reading, but for some reason my expectations for Gaiman's work were too narrow and these stories were far enough outside that expectation that they were off-putting - that's entirely on me and what I brought to the reading, but it doesn't change how I felt about the collection.
Highlight reads for me, included: Chivalry, We Can Get Them For You Wholesale, Murder Mysteries, and Snow, Glass, Apples. The best story in here, by a long way, is The Price. That's my takeaway brilliant story from this collection.
I think I just don't like Gaiman's short story style, or maybe I don't like his early short story style? I'm not sure, but the fact is I disliked more of these stories than I liked, though the ones I liked I really did.