Although short fiction is not in the best of health I seem to be reading rather a lot of it lately. Following on from Fragile Things I've just finished Susanna Clarke's collection The Ladies of Grace Adieu, a companion piece to her excellent mammoth debut novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell.

All the stories are set in the same world as the earlier book, except The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His Horse, which takes place in the world of Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Not that you could necessarily tell the difference as Gaiman and Clarke's visions of Faerie seem pretty much interchangeable, a connection strengthened by the use of a common illustrator. Charles Vess, whom collaborated on the original storybook version of Stardust provides a selection of fine line drawings to The Ladies of Grace Adieu.

First up in Ladies is the title tale itself, a curious and not wholly satisfying adventure for Jonathan Strange. The precise nature of the encounter between England's Second Magician and Clarke's version of the Three Graces is left ambiguous, leaving the reader entertained but curiously unsatisfied.

In truth several of the earlier stories in the book continue in this vein of tolerable disappointment. On Lickerish Hill is a re-telling of Rapunzel with odd little narrative quirks that frustrate as much as they delight. Mrs Mabb is a rather mechanical and uninteresting tale of the rivalry between a woman and some mystical but very tiny widow for the love of an army captain.

Things do improve though, as the book progresses. The genuinely marvellous Mr Simonelli or The Fairy Widower at last provides a really meaty storyline to get stuck into whereas Tom Brightwind or How The Fairy Bridge was Built at Thoresby is a great example of off-the-wall idea told with real panache. If these two high points have one flaw, however, then it's the portrayal of the fairy characters within them - rather too similar to the equivalent figure in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell for comfort.

The best is saved for last. John Uskglass and The Cumbrian Charcol Burner is not very long but it is a truly magnificent bit of writing. It's everything we've come to love about Clarke's work, including, finally, a substantial portrait of the mysterious Raven King himself. If Uskglass does not feature very prominiently in the follow-up novel which is apparently in the works now, I will be amongst the legions of fans who are very disappointed indeed.

The letters page of Judge Dredd Megazine 263 contains a rather shabby bit of criticism aimed at our recently published Holt Bros effort:

The Small Press story was, as usual, pretty poor. I admire the fact that you give this stuff a chance at a wider readership (with the fact it's cheap being one of the reasons it's here, I'm sure) , but all most of it does is make readers realise exactly why these people are making their own comics rather than being paid by someone else to do it.

Obviously, there is such a thing as fair comment, and Alan Holloway of Weston Super Mare is entitled to his opinion. Besides no strip is going to appeal to everyone, certainly many of the professional stories in the Meg have come in for a lot worse.

With that in mind I'd like to make my final point:

FUCK YOU ALAN HOLLOWAY, FUCK YOU TO HELL.

Sometimes despite my better judgement, I try to keep up with the fiction of comic genius Neil Gaiman. Despite my enduring love of his comic work such as Sandman I've always found his prose a bit hit and miss. So it was with some trepidation that I embarked upon Fragile Things, Mr G's second collection of short stories.

The book comprises about two dozen stories and poems, none of which I've actually read before although two of the stories were familiar to me. Feeders and Eaters is an adaption of Gaiman's own contribution to the Revolver Halloween special which I used to possess, and Harlequin Valentine was adapted into a short Dark Horse graphic novel by John Bolton, which I still have.

Let's deal with the poems first because the author mentions in his introduction that they don't go down very well with some readers. This adverse reaction might be a prejudice against poetry in general but I'm afraid that Gaiman's poems in particular aren't that good. He hasn't got the control of language required to make a really fine poem so his efforts don't contain sufficient rhythym or depth to stick in the memory for long.

Fortunately the short stories are a completely different kettle of fish. Almost all entertaining, some of them are genuinely excellent. The Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft pastiche A Study in Emerald is splendidly constructed, luring you into thinking that Gaiman hasn't understood Holmes at all then revealing with a marvellous twist that in fact he knows him perfectly.

I really enjoyed How to Talk to Girls at Parties, the thin conceit is successfully amusing. Also high on the list is Goliath, a strange Matrix spin-off that doesn't really fit with those films at all but works exquisitely on its own terms. Surprisingly, the American Gods sequel Monarch of the Glen isn't bad either. Given that the novel itself definitely is bad, that's quite some achievement.

I'm not so keen on either Feeders and Eaters, which worked better as a comic or Harlequin Valentine, which doesn't really work in either form. The fragmentary stories, such as those penned for Tori Amos albums are a little weak, but not off-puttingly so.

Overall, I would say it was a decent collection. There's a transatlantic tinge to most of the stories now reflecting the increasing disconnection between Gaiman and Britain. He repeatedly mentions Croydon as some kind of mythical Hinterland of his youth, which may work well to his middle-American target audience but is a little bemusing to a reader like myself who lives about ten miles away from the place.

It's a shame that Gaiman decided to jump the Britannian ship and chase the yankee dollar full-time because I never really get the impression he has much of a feel for America and certainly his least successful prose work is often set there.

Still he's plenty talented enough to keep you entertained even when not at his very best and that pretty much sums up Fragile Things. And his next book might be better, certainly October in the Chair augurs well as a tryout for his forthcoming novel The Graveyard Book....