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Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Audiobook11 hours

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

Written by Neil Gaiman

Narrated by Neil Gaiman

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

Multiple award winning, #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman returns to dazzle, captivate, haunt, and entertain with this third collection of short fiction following Smoke and Mirrors and Fragile Things—which includes a never-before published American Gods story, “Black Dog,” written exclusively for this volume.

In this new collection, Neil Gaiman pierces the veil of reality to reveal the enigmatic, shadowy world that lies beneath. Trigger Warning includes previously published pieces of short fiction—stories, verse, and a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the fiftieth anniversary of the beloved series in 2013—as well “Black Dog,” a new tale that revisits the world of American Gods, exclusive to this collection.

Trigger Warning explores the masks we all wear and the people we are beneath them to reveal our vulnerabilities and our truest selves. Here is a rich cornucopia of horror and ghosts stories, science fiction and fairy tales, fabulism and poetry that explore the realm of experience and emotion. In Adventure Story—a thematic companion to The Ocean at the End of the Lane—Gaiman ponders death and the way people take their stories with them when they die. His social media experience A Calendar of Tales are short takes inspired by replies to fan tweets about the months of the year—stories of pirates and the March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother’s Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. And Click-Clack the Rattlebag explains the creaks and clatter we hear when we’re all alone in the darkness.

A sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, Gaiman entrances with his literary alchemy, transporting us deep into the realm of imagination, where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday incandescent. Full of wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul from one of the most unique and popular literary artists of our day.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateFeb 3, 2015
ISBN9780062373625
Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances
Author

Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling and multi-award winning author and creator of many beloved books, graphic novels, short stories, film, television and theatre for all ages. He is the recipient of the Newbery and Carnegie Medals, and many Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Will Eisner Awards. Neil has adapted many of his works to television series, including Good Omens (co-written with Terry Pratchett) and The Sandman. He is a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Refugee Agency UNHCR and Professor in the Arts at Bard College. For a lot more about his work, please visit: https://www.neilgaiman.com/

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Reviews for Trigger Warning

Rating: 4.302491103202847 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Most of the stories were good and Neil read them to me.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    It's difficult to categorise Neil Gaiman's writing - fantasy? horror? modern fairy tale? Suffice it to say it is strange, a marvellous strange that leads you on previously unseen paths. This collection gathers wisps of weird worlds and snippets of our own into a single book. Go into each story without expectations and you won't fail to be enchanted.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked the vast majority of these tales, and if you are a Gaiman fan, chances are you will, too. They are very Gaimanesque, as it were. I particularly enjoyed the one about the reverse inventor, the American Gods tale, and the Doctor Who story. Some of the others were quite good as well. No bad stories, to be sure, but there were a couple forgettable ones. Still, I very much enjoyed it as a whole, and will of course continue to gobble up every other Gaiman book I can get my hands on.A note on the audio: Gaiman is, hands down, my very favorite book narrator. If you have a choice between experiencing his words on paper or in sound, always choose sound.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I received this book from Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review. Few can write short stories that hold my interest. This book takes me back to those 30 minute twilight zone episodes or Stephen King's earlier short story compilations. This book includes many different themes and ideas. It is thoughtful and dark with writing that engulfs your imagination.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a very good collection. The quality is consistent, but the theme is not. A wide variety of work of various kinds, some appropriate for children, some that might easily upset adults, some fantasy, some mystery. I'm very glad I read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    4 stars. I enjoyed most of the stories.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a decent collection of mixed tales from Neil Gaiman. The thing about them is that they are such a mixed bag that you will find those that you really enjoy and those that you do not at all. That is the conundrum. The introduction tries to get you to understand that these tales reach for a "trigger warning" of the different themes (typically death, fear, abuse, etc) that are associated with the works. Nevertheless, it is work reading.3 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Neil Gaiman - do I really need to say more than that? If you're not familiar with this modern hero of short story and urban fantasy legend, then go to one of his earlier compilations and brush up. If you do know Gaiman then pick this up as there are a few gems of worthy note - Lunar Labyrinth (homage to Cthulhu); Down to the Sunless Sea (gold seal of an excellent short story with a dash of creepy for good measure); The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury (brief reflection on the rusting of literature); Click-Clack the Rattlebag (superb YA creepy (Stine would be proud)); Nothing O'Clock (Dr Who!!); The Sleeper and the Spindle (bonus for guessing which fairy tale this one is about); and lastly Feminine Endings (by far the darkest, not for the weak, loved it). The rest of the stories were either blase' or tiring, One or two left me wondering if I should even attempt to read another, but this is Gaiman so you push on because the one's that are great are not just good writing but power boosters of creativity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    [had to return to library--on hold] I still believe Gaiman's real strength lies in short stories (major exceptions: Anansi Boys and Good Omens), though this is not his absolute best collection so far. However, "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains," is among the best of the best. 4 1/2 stars
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A delightfully disturbing collection of short stories and poems by Gaiman, just as advertised in the title. In his introduction Gaiman outlines the origin story or background for each selection, which is useful (though I'm not sure you necessarily will want to read these before you've read the stories; I skimmed them at first and then read each after I'd read the piece). Also in the introduction Gaiman makes an extremely useful point: "What we read as adults should be read, I think, with no warnings or alerts beyond, perhaps: enter at your own risk. We need to find out what fiction is, what it means, to us, an experience that is going to be unlike anyone else's experience of the story."My own favorites from this volume were "A Lunar Labyrinth," "Orange," "The Case of Death and Honey," "Click-Clack the Rattlebag," and "Black Dog," but yours will be different, I expect.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A collection of Gaiman shorts that have, all but one, been published elsewhere. Despite this, they make for a reasonably coherent whole. There are twists on classic fairy tales, ghost stories, poems, fantasy tales, and one story that follows Shadow Moon (Mr. Wednesday's body guard from American Gods) when he encounters the classic British Black Dog ghost. The best of these stories are a pure joy to read and Gaiman's fantastic imagination is given free reins, which is always a good thing. There were a few stories that only made sense once I found out which publications they had been written for and a few poems that didn't really work for me (especially "Making a Chair," which unfortunately starts the collection), but in Gaiman's defense, I'm not a huge reader of poetry. Note that the Introduction sometimes has spoilers, so read that last.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A new collection of short stories and poems by Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning is filled with moments of perfection. From a short terrifying tale included in the author’s note to the final story “Black Dog” which tells another of Shadow’s adventures as he travels through England, slowly making his way back towards the States, The pace keeps you reading while the style makes you want to read everything aloud. The collection includes “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains”, “Click Clack the Rattle Bag”, “The Sleeper and the Spindle”, and “The Case of Death and Honey” (a tale of Sherlock Holmes and beekeeping). The author’s notes on each story are well worth reading, and this is certainly a book I will return to time and again, flipping it open to a story to fall into its world.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    He's definitely a good writer. Most of the poems were kind of awful and the love letter felt awfully contrived but the other stories made up for it pretty well and showed his range of skill
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A Trigger warning is that thing stuck on just about everything from music to books to TV shows that warns us that the material may be disturbing to some of us. As Neil Gaiman explains it“There are things that upset us…images or words or ideas that drop like trapdoors beneath us, throwing us out of our safe, sane world into a place much more dark and less welcoming. Our hearts skip a ratatat drum-beat in our chests and we fight for breath. Blood retreats from our faces and our fingers, leaving us pale and gasping and shocked…What do we need to be warned about? We each have our own little triggers.”So, given Neil Gaiman’s ability to write stories that are guaranteed to disturb, it is certainly appropriate that this latest collection of his short stories has been titled Trigger Warning. Most of the stories have been published previously but, unless you’re that intrepid super fan that has hunted for every crumb of Gaiman ephemera, there’s sure to be something here to please or better yet send chills up the spine.Granted not all of these stories are creepy or scary or even a little spine-tingling and, as in every collection of short stories, I like some better than others but they are all great fun to read and they all have Gaiman’s signature twist, making even the most familiar tale seem new again. My personal favourites were The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains in which two men set out in search of gold and revenge and Orange which is a strange list of answers to a questionnaire about aliens, jam, and other assorted things. But I thoroughly enjoyed all of the others including a Sherlock Holmes tale, The Case of Death and Honey and a Doctor Who story, Nothing O’clock. There are also a couple of fairly well-known fairy tales that Gaiman has rewritten in very interesting ways. Gaiman is that rare writer who never fails to enchant, entertain, and ensnare the imagination of his readers and Trigger Warning is typical Gaiman. If you’re a fan or even if you’re not, there’s bound to be something here to delight as well as disturb. Heck, I even enjoyed reading his Introduction almost as much as I did the stories.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderful listen. Enjoyed all the tales, especially the last one.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I mean, it did have “trigger warning” in the title. But some of these stories were too unsettling. Or too unresolved. It’s hard to write a review for a whole book when the stories were all so different. But this collection was darker, I felt, than the other Gaiman collections I have read.

    My favorite story was probably “The Man who Forgot Ray Bradbury”. It was a beautiful tribute to an author whose stories have a similar darkness to Gaiman’s own.

    If you have the chance to get an audiobook read by Neil Gaiman, do it. They are so good. I sat in my car, quickly getting too hot, to listen to the end of a story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book is that uneasy feeling of visiting an abandoned building. It's the knowledge that there are dark things waiting for you to fall, anytime, any place. It's the folk tale that refuses to go away despite the multiple attacks from reason and common sense. It's the legend that declares the end of all things, and the prophecy that led a man to an early grave.It's a book by Neil Gaiman. With all the wonderful and terrible things that come from his head.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Trigger Warning is Gaiman's third, and most disappointing, collection of short fiction to date. It feels very much like a collection that needed another couple of years to build up material, or to take some of the stories in it through another rewrite or two. Most of the stories are very short, much shorter than is typical of Gaiman. Why is this a problem? Well, Gaiman's strengths are mostly in atmosphere, symbolism, dialogue, character depth, and prose. Things that are already hard to convey in a short story, much less a super short story. The shorter you go, the more the format favors literary experimentation and high-concept ideas rather than any of the things Gaiman is particularly good at. Many of these stories could've had a lot more impact if they had more meat on the bones. More build up, more atmosphere, more time to get to know the characters, etc.

    The longest story is The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains. Despite having the length I want and then some, I don't think this story is anything special. It's also pretty road-worn at this point. It was already in a Gaiman edited short story collection full of very popular authors, Stories (which is where I originally read it), a standalone illustrated edition, an audio book, and Gaiman traveled around doing readings with an orchestra backing him. Colored me confused, because I don't see what's so special about this story that it deserves being resold again and again in every possible format. It just isn't that great.

    That's a trend that continues, by the way. Near as I can tell, there's only two completely new stories in here. His previous two collections were pretty much the same way, but taking a quick look at where those stories were first printed, it's a bunch of hard to find print-only anthologies, subscription magazines, horror convention promotional items, etc. A bunch of stuff I've never heard of in my life and that would be hard to track down, basically. Perhaps this is simply a sign of the rise of digital content or of Gaiman's extreme popularity or both, but many of the stories here are easily and/or freely available online and, at least in my opinion, pretty well-known by the average Gaiman fan. At least two stories were for newspapers and can still be found online for free. A Calendar of Tales was a marketing promotion Gaiman did with Blackberry where he took writing prompts from twitter users for every month of the year and wrote a very short piece for it, and that's free as well. It's also pretty terrible, and not something I ever want to read again, so...yay? Glad I have that one tucked away in my shelf for posterity! But yeah, I was annoyed to see so much I'd already read, and very little else in the book smacked me in the face with the kind of wide-eyed wonder that would make up the difference.

    Now, let's be honest, Gaiman is never terrible. Unlike so many authors he seems incapable of writing anything that's blatantly stupid or frustrating, and his prose is always pretty good. There's consistency there that's to be admired. But expectations are relative, and I expect a Gaiman story to have a flash of magic, a lasting impression, or at the very least to be about something. Instead it's a struggle to recall the very basics of most of these stories as I look back on the index page, which is rare for me. I can do the same to his previous two collections, which I read years ago now, and be hit with vivid memories. These stories just lack something in comparison. They are ephemeral. If I had to pick one word to describe them it would be, "musings," because that's all they are--ideas that he didn't fully flesh out. If they were posted on his blog for free, they'd be an interesting diversion. As something I paid money for, they leave a lot to be desired. Combine that with the hefty amount of reused material that was popular enough beforehand for me to run across it without even really trying to, and I'm pretty disappointed. Not as disappointed as I was when I bought Fortunately, the Milk or Hansel and Gretel, but still. Gaiman just doesn't consistently hit it out of the park anymore, for whatever reason. I'd say this is still worth it if you're a fan, but temper your expectations, and maybe don't pay full price for it like I did.

    Here's the titles of all the stories and the ratings I gave them as I was reading.

    Making a Chair (4/5)
    A Lunar Labyrinth (3/5)
    The Thing About Cassandra (4/5)
    Down to a Sunless Sea (2/5)
    The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains... (2/5)
    My Last Landlady (3/5)
    Adventure Story (2/5)
    Orange (5/5)
    A Calendar of Tales (2/5)
    The Case of Death and Honey (4/5)
    The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury (3/5)
    Jerusalem (2/5)
    Click-Clack the Rattlebag (3/5)
    An Invocation of Incuriosity (3/5)
    And Weep, Like Alexander (3/5)
    Nothing O'Clock (3/5)
    Diamonds and Pearls: A Fairy Tale (2/5)
    The Return of the Thin White Duke (5/5)
    Feminine Endings (4/5)
    Observing the Formalities (2/5)
    The Sleeper and the Spindle (4/5)
    Witch Work (2/5)
    In Relig Odhrain (2/5)
    Black Dog (5/5)





  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, an enjoyable read. A handful of stories felt like experiments that didn't quite work, but most were engaging if not memorable.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Gaiman is a terrific, and exciting writer. In his novels, he is a pro at world building and full immersion. Through his short stories, he is able to use new voices, different techniques. They are much, much different than his books and refreshing because of it. Standouts: The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains... and Orange.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Decent, predictable.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As a Neil Gaiman fan, I found this collection a bit uneven. If all the stories had been as good as the best of them—“Lunar Labyrinth,” “The Thing about Cassandra,” “Nothing O’Clock” (a Dr. Who story), “Orange,” “Click-Clack the Rattlebag,” “The Sleeper and the Spindle,” and “Black Dog” (a further adventure of Shadow Moon)—I would have given it 5 stars. But the weaker stories kind of brought it down for me, and there were 24 tales and poems in all. I would’ve been thrilled with just 12 of the best of these, as it took a number of starts and stops during reading it over four months. I almost never made it to my favorite, “Black Dog,” which features Shadow Moon in England after the events of American Gods.

    Definitely worthwhile, but I would like to have edited this collection.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Gaiman's short stories are hit or miss. Many of the stories in this collection are great, but then there are the others that are just... meh.

    But truth be told, I had a good time reading this collection. Gaiman's imagination is top-notch as usual, and his style complements it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall I enjoyed the stories, some more than others. My favorites being Click clack the rattle bag, and Black Dog. With "the twist" being one of the most common mechanics in storytelling it is sometimes hard to find a story in which the ending is not an obvious one. However in those 2 short stories I can honestly say that I was surprised by the endings. The more I read of Gaiman's work the more in love with it I find myself.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Loves most of the short fictions and disturbances; esp. The thing about Cassandra. The introduction was very good and had moments of humor as well.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I could not wait to get my hands on Neil Gaiman’s Trigger Warning! This is a short story collection and I would definitely advise you to read the introduction; not because you need it to understand the stories, but because it will help you appreciate them that much more. It will also help you to find the trigger in each story. All of us have something that bothers us at our core, “things that profoundly upset” us but teach us things and open our eyes, as Neil says in the introduction; these are our triggers. The stories with my triggers were the ones I enjoyed most in the collection.The Thing About Cassandra was the first story to really make my heart flutter. It begins innocently enough with a young man creating a made up girlfriend to get his friends and even his mother off of his back. However, when the imaginary woman shows up in his adult life, things get interesting. This story triggered me for the power of the imagination. As someone who might make up whole worlds and timelines in their head, Neil’s interpretation of the impacts of imagining just one person were profound, along with the twist at the end, this story was something that got me thinking and felt like it was much more intense than the 20 pages that it lasted.“The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains…” had many small triggers, lies, deceit, revenge and judging people on appearances. When a smaller man, one we might call a little person today, seeks out a much larger man to guide him to a cave fabled to be laden with gold and a curse, each man will discover something from the journey that they did not expect. The best thing for me was the slow burn of the sweet revenge that I probably enjoyed more than I should have. As a lover of fairy tale retellings, The Sleeper and the Spindle caught my attention. Something even more sinister is lurking within this fairy tale where good and evil may not be so easily determined. Obviously, an intelligent, savvy and strong hero is needed and will come from an unlikely source. This new version of the classic is now a favorite retelling of mine. This book was received for free in return for an honest review.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Neil Gaiman is a thoughtful and skillful writer and the tales he tells in this short story collection are interesting and instense. Admittedly, I skipped around through the stories, rather than reading cover-to-cover, but what I read impressed me and left me thinking. He writes a very eloquent introduction explaining each of the stories and the title (referring to content that might "trigger" issues and scars we all carry beneath our shiny, happy veneers.) Gaiman weaves a little fairy tale, a little science fiction, a little spirituality into deft stories that leave a mark. I appreciate that he doesn't go for the easy scare or cheap shot, like Stephen King and others of that ilk (though in fairness King has come a long way). Lots to think about and talk about here.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In typical Gaiman fashion these were a little creepy, a little sweet, and a little fairy tale-ish. I enjoyed them, I usually do enjoy his works, though there was one (a Doctor Who story) I wound up skipping. One of my favorites was actually the last story, the new Shadow story from American Gods. I had forgotten I need to reread that, I'll have to get to that this year. Additionally Neil does a great job at narrating the story. He's great at voices, and makes each story distinct with slight accents or different pitches to his voice.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    Not Gaiman at his best. The intros are getting way too long (we get it, you spend a lot of time on the internet) and these stories were just sub-par. I guess I just prefer his novel-length work better.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A collection of short stories and poems that range from weird and creepy to quite scary to beautiful prose. I particularly enjoyed "A Calendar of Tales" and "Nothing O'Clock".