Had bought this book a year ago to finally dive into what the Gaiman hype was about, and was eager for this to be the first of many I added to my list. Well between then and now all the allegations came out against him which were disappointing to say the least— but I figured I already paid for it so I’m still going to read it!

That’s all to say I was preparing to do the gymnastics of separating art from artists to justify any addition works of his I was to read, but I found myself less gravitationally pulled in than I expected. 

Numerous times during reading I found myself asking ‘what in the world did I just read??’  Sometimes that was a compliment in the form of awe, sometimes..not. I definitely found myself leaning more towards the positive aspect of that as the last 20-30% played out, but the first majority had too many dragged out, confusing, and disjointed versions of it for me to find myself as consistently engrossed as I hoped. In the 10th anniversary preface Gaiman wrote for the version I have, he noted this text added back in some of the parts his editor had described as meandering in the original cuts. I think that’s a good word to describe the parts that challenged me— too meandering. Some of the fat could be readily trimmed that might have led me to rate this higher. 

But in the meantime, I’ll give it 3 stars and not feel like I’m missing out too much if I don’t dive into more of Gaiman’s work.