smoke and mirrors short fictions and illusions

I want to say it was in Grade 12, because that’s when I read a big anthology of Harlan Ellison’s works, but maybe I’m only claiming it was then because I was under the impression, for the longest time, that this story was written by Ellison. I read this story a long time ago somewhere else-I don’t recall where now. My favourite story is, by far, “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale,” and I’ll tell you why: I thought this was a Harlan Ellison story. It’s as if Gaiman is trying to say something…. I was never much a fan of Richard Mayhew from Neverwhere, and many of the characters in these stories share that quality of being a less-than-stellar human being. In particular, he often writes protagonists who are-or at least start off as-vaguely unsympathetic. I’ve always appreciated Gaiman on a stylistic level. This unsurprising quality is not bad, just different. There’s a story about a troll who wants to “eat the life” of a victim, which essentially means … well, I’ll let you guess. Smoke and Mirrors is rife with examples like this: “Snow, Glass, Apples” reimagines Snow White as a vampire child and the Queen as a heroine protecting her realm-it all ends poorly for her, still.

When there are twists, you can often see them coming.

Gaiman is a writer who loves to play with and subvert tropes, but he does it in very obvious ways. I have to say that the more I read Gaiman’s stories the less unexpected or surprising they seem, if you know what I mean. Unlike the other collection, Smoke and Mirrors’ introduction also comes with a bonus short story embedded. As with Fragile Things this earlier collection has a description of each story’s origin in the introduction. Now that I own copies of Neil Gaiman’s three short story anthologies, I re-read Fragile Things and then tackled this one, Smoke and Mirrors.

Smoke and mirrors short fictions and illusions