Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions Paperback – Import, 15 June 2021

Neil Gaiman is one of the most prolific storytellers of our times, and THIS is the best collection of his stories. It contains those stories which exemplify his strengths (and weaknesses) in the boldest strokes. Much like life, his stories are something that we can immediately connect to, and simultaneously tend to keep some aspects of their presence somewhat distant, out of fear, disgust, suspicion, or envy. My choice, among all the stories in this collection (several of which had already been read by me in a far superior-looking collection brought out by Subterranean Press, named "M is For Magic"), would be "Chivalry", "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories", "The White Road", "The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Mrs Finch", "Changes", "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar", "Only the End of the World Again", "Bay Wolf", "Fifteen Painted Cards from the Vampire Tarot", "Desert Wind", and "Murder Mysteries". There are several other fascinating stories here, including the weird and tortuously pointless "Snow, Glass, Apples". However, with so many glittering jewels (most of them bearing colours of brightest poisons) in this collection, if you are thinking of having only ONE representative collection of Gaiman's shorter works, don't look anywhere else. Highly Recommended.

Neil Gaiman is an accomplished writer and the language just flows. It was a highly pleasurable read. Many thanks to the Author.

Some really great fantasy stories in here, especially in the first third of the book. Quality varies after that. But still a great collection to pick up.

there is no bad writing (story/poem) in the book.. some excellent.. some just okay. Many of them have very interesting concept..

I read this book some years ago. And now again. It has not lost its magic. Gaiman is a huge storyteller. This is one of five books that I would carry to an isolated mountain.

I started this book a few months ago while on an airplane. I was reading it on my kindle and got to about p20 and gave up. It seemed that other than the wedding gift story that opened the book, it was filled with vignettes about how this or that story came about. I came back to the book a few days ago and discovered that the introduction chapter was 33 pages! Each of the stories described in the intro are in the book. I would have preferred that the story of how each story came to be be placed directly ahead of the actual story. I read the stories that way, using the "go to page.." feature to return to the introduction before reading each of the stories. The stories are pretty good, well told. Adult themed, some vampire stuff which isn't my thing, but good tales nevertheless. The wedding gift was my favorite. If you like Neil Gaiman's writing, you'll like Smoke and Mirrors.

Llegó en buen tiempo y en perfecto estado, gran adición a la colección de Gaiman y más a esta línea con portadas de Robert McGinnis.

Nice short stories

Para ler em viagens e sem pressa.Gaiman é um gênio e cada texto dele te leva para um mundo diferente.Vale cada centavo