Neil Gaiman is an amazing storyteller, and this collection of short stories highlights some of his most interesting work. Unfortunately it wasn’t all his strongest. Like most collections of short works it had its good and its bad. I’d hoped for less bad from Gaiman.

The Good
The poem “The Day the Saucers Came” seems to have become an instant classic, and for good reason.
Sunbird was a really interesting phoenix story.
A Study in Emerald was my personal favorite of the whole volume. It was a great start to the book...
Pages from a Journal Found in a Shoebox Left in a Greyhound Bus Somewhere Between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Louisville, Kentucky was interesting and I think hit the mark just right.
The Problem of Susan was wonderfully meta!

The So-So
Monarch of the Glens was good, but long. I know that Gaiman sometimes takes a while to get where he’s going, but it just didn’t do it for me, at least not as part of this collection, and not as the last story in the book!
How to Talk to Girls at Parties was cute, and I liked the idea... but it just didn’t work for me.

The Bad
Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot
October in the Chair
The poems

I think the biggest issue with this collection is that is isn’t coherent. It never comes together, which is a shame. Another reviewer described it as a mix tape rather than an album, and I think that is a perfect analogy.