Smoke and Mirrors is an anthology from Neil Gaiman. I find I enjoy anthologies because they usually contain a wide variety of stories. Gaiman is one of my favourite authors so it's a treat to read him trying out various themes and genres.
The group starts out strong with "Chivalry". A story about the Holy Grail. It illustrates one of the things I really enjoy about Gaiman's work, taking the fantastical and making it ordinary. That the Holy Grail could be found in a thrift shop gives me the same feeling as when I looked for magical lands in closets when I was a child.
It also ends strong in "Snow, Glass, Apples" which is a story of Snow White. If only Mirror Mirror been half as good. I don't normally enjoy stories written in first perspective but I think it was very effective in this story.
That's not to say that I liked everything that was in this volume. Some of it was OK ("One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock") and some I just didn't like ("When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, Age 11 1/4") but the good far outweighs the bad.
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