Smoke and Mirrors

If I remember correctly, I bought the paperback edition of this book the year I created Pat's Fantasy Hotlist. So yeah, it's been a while. Seventeen years, for those of you who are keeping track. Why wait this long before reading it? I have no idea. Like so many other speculative fiction works I should have read long ago, I figure that Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors somehow found a way to always fall through the cracks and I never got around to reading it.

A few weeks back, as I was rereading my Sandman omnibus editions prior to watching the Netflix TV series (no, I haven't watched it yet), I realized yet again just how good Gaiman could be. In the mood for more, I turned my attention to his collections of short fiction pieces. There are a few of them now, and the only one I ever read and reviewed was Fragile Things. Hence, it was high time to give his very first collection to be published a shot.

Here's the blurb:

The astonishing and impressive first collection of short stories from New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman

An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat in a second-hand store . . .

A stray cat fights and refights a nightly battle to protect his adoptive family from an unimagiable evil . . .

A young couple receives a wedding gift that will reveal a chilling alternate history of their marriage . . .

Beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks, a frightened little boy bargains for his life with a most persistent troll . . .

Such miraculous inventions and more await within Neil Gaiman’s first collection of short fiction, a gift of wonder and delight from one of the most unique literary artists of our day. In his capable hands, magic is no mere illusion, but a powerful means to reveal the nature of our humanity obscured in the smoke of our fears and anxieties . . . and reflected in the funhouse mirrors of our dreams.

Every time I review an anthology or a collection, I bemoan the fact that such works are almost always filled with lackluster filler material, with only a few quality short stories that manage to rise above the others. The rest, unfortunately, is always ordinary or forgettable stuff that fail to make an impression on the reader. I believed that it would be different with Neil Gaiman, that every single piece found throughout the pages of Smoke and Mirrors would be worth a read. Alas, it appears that in my excitement I forgot that this was the author's first collection and that he wasn't yet the powerhouse he would soon become.

Still, some of the short stories were awesome and showed Gaiman's brilliance and weirdness to their full extent. Pieces like "The Wedding Present", "Troll Bridge", "The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories", "Murder Mysteries", and "Snow, Glass, Apples" were memorable in various ways. Others, like "Chivalry", "Changes", "Looking for the Girl", "We Can Get Them for You Wholesale", "Foreign Parts", and "Tastings" were good, but there was something missing from each of them. That little something that would have made them as special as the other tales.

Sadly, the rest of the collection was made up of pieces that for some reason failed to resonate with me, or else bored me from the first page to the last. Thankfully, some of these are quite short.

In the end, Smoke and Mirrors makes for a decidedly uneven reading experience. When it's good, you eat it up with a spoon and can't wait to read the next story. The pieces that fall into the second category, though they don't quite manage to enthrall you, nevertheless manage to keep you interested. Those that I considered duller and a bit uninspired, even if blessedly short, quickly make you lose interest in this book. Which is why it took me so long to finish it. The way the stories have been arranged forces the reader to go through a few of the bland ones before reaching the more notable tales.

Hence, your mileage may vary.

The final verdict: 7/10

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