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Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman

Mark Graham, Special to the News

Published October 5, 2006 at midnight

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• Fiction. By Neil Gaiman. William Morrow, $26.95. Grade: A

Plot in a nutshell: Gaiman's second collection following the immensely popular Smoke and Mirrors contains 31 stories, poems, essays and a novella starring Shadow, the hero of American Gods, a Hugo, Nebula and Bram Stoker award winner. Although only one story, "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," is original to the collection, many others were published in such obscure anthologies, magazines and Web sites that it's hard to imagine that even the most adamant fan has read them all.

The plots vary widely. In "How to Talk to Girls at Parties," a shy teenager finds himself at a house party filled with beautiful girls. The only problem is that the ladies are aliens on a one-night tour. "The Monarch of the Glen" finds Shadow of American Gods fame taking on the role of Beowulf in a battle against a modern Grendel to satisfy the lusts of the super rich. "The Day the Saucers Came" shows that Gaiman is as at home writing poetry as he is in the world of prose. This is actually a love poem about how distracted a person can be while waiting for his lover's phone call, even missing the most important events in history.

Sample of prose: "He knew it was a demon the moment he saw it. He knew it just as he knew the place was Hell. There was nothing else that either of them could have been .. . A multitude of objects hung on the rock gray walls, of the kind it would not have been wise to inspect too closely . . . The demon was rake thin and naked. It was deeply scarred and appeared to have been flayed at some time in the distant past . . ."

Pros: The wide variety of selections shows Gaiman's influences and his amazing range as one of the world's most popular fantasy writers. Some stories are frightening; a couple are laugh-out-loud funny; some are downright strange.

Cons: As an exhaustive collection of Gaiman's short works since Smoke and Mirrors, a few of the stories are not as strong as others.

Final word: I hope Gaiman has room on his shelf for a few more trophies. Readers will be hard-pressed to find a better collection this year.