Books Tasted - Everything bookly (and a few other things)

I love Neil Gaiman. He has an amazing imagination and is able to take our everyday world and twist, and suddenly there are all kinds of fantasy elements tied to the fringe. He is usually very effective at drawing the reader into the story by making his main characters part of the "normal" world, and having them sucked into the fantastical as unsuspectingly as we readers are. (Everything that was wrong with The Somnambulist, Gaiman does right.)

I just finished Neil Gaiman's collection of "short fictions and wonders," Fragile Things. I was disappointed in this collection. Although Gaiman's works vary between the dramatic and the comedic, they usually fill me with a sense of wonder that lifts my mood. In this collection, many of the stories are ghostly, horrific, or just plain unsettling, but not uplifting.

Several of the stories were intriguing, but not long enough to give me time to explore and understand the characters. I could see several of them being developed into novels, but as short stories, they left me unfulfilled.

My favorite stories/poems from the book include Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire (a funny twist on gothic tales), Sunbird, and Goliath (written for The Matrix website before The Matrix was released in theaters). I started to write a list of the ones I didn't like, but I couldn't find ones I hated, so much as ones that just made me go "ehh" or "blah" or in one case "eww" (ok, that one was Feeders and Eaters).

Sadly, I would not recommend this book to most people, simply because there is so much better Gaiman out there.

Disagree? Leave me a comment!