Reddit reviews Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

I just recently finished one of Neil Gaiman's short story collections, Smoke and Mirrors. I don't know how close it is to GrrM's works, but I really enjoyed them. Find them here on Amazon.

True story:

I once dated a girl (true story! I swear!). She got sick one day (nothing serious) so I came over to keep her company. I brought my favorite book to read to her - smoke and mirrors by Neil Gaiman.

Started reading the first story - Chivalry. It's a fantastic short story. To maybe pique your interest, the first line of the story is

> Mrs. Whitaker found the Holy Grail; it was under a fur coat.

and it goes on from there.

After I'm done I find that she was sure the story was a Monty Python spoof. I shit you not - she had no idea the holy grail was even a thing outside of that movie.

And I'm not even talking about an uneducated girl who never reads. She was a geeky girl, loved reading, loved Monty Python, loved sci-fi, loved books. Had no idea what the holy grail references. Seen "the holy grail" five times with me and I don't know how many times before we met - and was completely sure it was something invented for the movie.

Blew my mind.

And BTW - it isn't limited to Christian mythology. After a trip to Israel when I started telling people how excited I was that I got to see the Andromeda stone in Jaffa... no one knew what I was talking about!

A room full of geeks and computer nerds, priding themselves on their lust for knowledge, and not one of them knew Andromeda was anything other than a galaxy! Never heard of Andromeda from Greek mythology! Can you imagine?

I love Neil Gaiman's short story collections, Smoke and Mirrors, and Fragile Things. They're mostly dark but some are humorous and some are just a little odd. They even include a variety of poetry.

You should check out any of Neil Gaiman's short story compilations
like Smoke and Mirrors (Smoke and Mirrors) or Fragile Things (Fragile Things). Also, Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio (Stories: All-New Tales Edited by Neil Gaiman and Al Sarrantonio) and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me) are a couple of great short-story anthologies that have some very strange/creepy moments.

Edit: Links in this subreddit tend to be pretty illegible, so I have included the titles of each book in parenthesis after the links for immediate legibility's sake).

It's pretty good for sure. I think the "my side of the story" thing would work better if he had the same character as in paradise lost, being this amazing leader that we all admire and aspire to be like but revealing that no ends are too far to enhance his own ego and power, taking the long road to show the intoxication of evil while never making an untrue statement.

Fans of this should definitely read "Murder Mysteries" in Neil Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors, a compilation of his short stories.