As you might expect with a collection of short stories, the stories are varied in both theme and length. But we're still talking about a Neil Gaiman book here, so you can expect to find plenty of horror and general weirdness throughout!
It's hard to review a book like this as a whole because it's so varied. I enjoyed plenty of the stories and wished they were longer, but I was glad to see the back of a few of them as well! I'd say I enjoyed about 80% of them. Many of the stories draw inspiration from Neil's (too informal to go with first name terms? I'm going with it anyway. Official besties, right, Neil?) own experiences, which are noted at the back of the book for each of them and add a really cool addition to the stories. There are familiar additions such as a new Doctor Who story (if you watch Doctor Who... If not, then probably not all that familiar to you!) called 'Nothing O'Clock', which I really enjoyed. I'm only aware of one televised Doctor Who episode written by Neil, so this was a nice addition for me. A really cool spin on Sherlock Holmes called 'The Case of Death and Honey', and a great addition to Shadow's story from American Gods called 'Black Dog'. 'The Thing About Cassandra' and 'Down to a Sunless Sea' are another two firm favourites. These and a handful of others stand out to me as solid and enjoyable short stories and made the book well worth reading.
I got along with pretty much all the genres in the book, even some of the horror ones! I'm typically not a horror fan, you could add the music of Jaws to The Little Mermaid and I'd have a pretty bad day, but I've found Neil's stories to be just enough for me to deal with. Except for 'Click-Clack the Rattlebag'... That one freaked me out a bit!
A heads up for Kindle readers - I mention above that the stories are all accompanied by the inspiration for each at the back of the book. It was a right pain in the arse navigating to them because there are no quick links to them, so you need to get there manually for each one. You might want to consider buying a physical booky book copy if you think this would piss you off.
As well as being a great collection, short stories are always a nice kind of reading pallet cleanser as well (Pallet? Retina cleanser instead, maybe?). Definitely a thumbs up from me!
Plot or Character driven | Mix |
Strong Character Development | Mix |
Lovable Characters | Mix |
Diverse Cast | Yes |
Pace | Fast |
Should I read it?
Yes
Buy your copy here!
Favourite Quote
Click to expand
Comments