Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

DNF at 15 %
First we are offered a massively off-putting and overinflated edgelord intro that was unnecessary in every imaginable way. I don't need trigger warnings and therefore I do not read them, not because I want to be challenged more than people who need them do but because I do not have the trauma and or experiences that they have. The apparent inability that Gaiman has to envision an experience of the world that isn't his own makes me wonder if his work was ever really as good as I thought it was or if I was just too immature and privileged to see it for what it was. The tirade is the reason I'm giving this book a 1 star rating where I would normally just not give a rating.

Then to add insult to injury we are offered a poem on the assembly of a chair followed by a pompously worded half-baked story. I couldn't be bothered to even flip to the story about American Gods which was the sole reason I decided to read that book.

After the great Gaiman desert of 2008-20013, I was so very relieved to see this collection come out close on the heels of Ocean at the End of the Lane. This collection certainly doesn't disappoint and contains a wide variety of stories from the ridiculously silly (And Weep Like Alexander) to the terrifyingly creepy (Feminine Endings). I tend to prefer the silly stories and still am looking around my rooms nervously for statue people because of the creepy ones.

I am not really a hardcore Whovian, but this collection does contain a treat for those who are and even us more marginal fans can enjoy it. The greatest hurrah is certainly “The Black Dog,” which Gaiman says is the second of 3 short stories (following Monarch of the Glen in Fragile Things) which follow Shadow's journey back to America. Also it has Bast in it and Bast is the best.

Two of the best stories have also been published as illustrated collections which I really need now. I've heard so much buzz about “The Sleeper and the Spindle” (for all the wrong reasons. It's a brilliant story and people way overreact to that kiss in a way that made me think I was going to read about a torrid lesbian affair between Snow White and Sleeping Beauty I find it a little annoyed that this misconception overshadowed a magnificently original retelling of both those tales from which the sea of bland fairy tale revisionists could really take a note or two.

Anyone who knows me at all knows I am an unabashed Gaiman fangirl and would be hard pressed to say a negative thing about the man. Some stories in this collection are better than others and which ones those are is totally going to depend on the reader. Trigger Warning has something for everyone and certainly a must have on the shelf of every short story fan.