qkjgrubb 's review for:

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman

2.0

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I'm not the intented market for Neil Gaiman. The only reason I read this was because my 14yo daughter wanted to read it and because it was shelved in my local library in the adult section, I thought it would be the responsible thing to read it first. Since it is a book of short stories, I found that many of them were inappropriate for her, and I may let her read a few. But I think my biggest objection is not the adult situations, but the lack of completeness in many of the stories. Some have only first acts. Some might get as far as a second, but few follow standard three act structure. They seem to be just snapshots of disturbing or eery or supernatural ideas and I got tired of this pretty quickly. But like I said, I'm not the right reader. Gaiman doesn't write for sunny dispositions, optimists or those looking for encouragement. And since all of those are values I want my daughter to have, I may point her elsewhere to other authors for now. Gaiman can be all hers when she's older.