As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. I’m glad that we are ending them together.
It has been a tremendous pleasure to spend the last eight weeks with you fine folk, praising and criticizing, dissecting and devouring the short fiction and poetry of Neil Gaiman.
The first time I read and reviewed the Fragile Things collection I wrote:
“Short story collections are something of an enigma. I have read a fair number of short story collections this year, and while some were fantastic from start to finish others contained stories ranging from the very good to the very average. Fragile Things occupies this latter category.”
My opinion of some of the stories in this collection changed in the positive direction when I later purchased the audio version of Fragile Things, but by and large I still agree with my initial assessment of this book. It has some of the very best examples of Neil Gaiman’s tremendous talent in the short story medium. And it contains examples of the things I just don’t care for in Neil’s writing. And there are some that fall squarely in between. There are more stories and poems that I like than those that I don’t and I do find myself coming back to various stories in the collection every few years come autumn.
I do appreciate everyone’s dedicated participation. This extra wrinkle in the R.I.P. Challenge has been so much fun.
And now, let us come to the end.
