Who Killed Amanda Palmer

This is a strange book. A collaboration between writer Neil Gaiman, singer Amanda Palmer, and various photographers (most especially Kyle Cassidy), this is a collection of stories, and pictures, all depicting the death of Amanda Palmer. There is also a tie-in CD of the same name, and Palmer's lyrics for her songs are also interspersed with the rest.

I loved Neil Gaiman's stories. He comes up with some rather strange ideas, like a time travel story where an older Amanda travels back in time to kill her younger self, or a modern day folk tale where Amanda is sent to get drugs for her evil stepmother and is rewarded for her kindness to junkies and drug dealers with the ability to have jewels come out of her mouth. Some of Gaiman's stories are really helped with the pictures that accompany with them, such as the picture that appears on the cover, of Amanda's body on a couch covered in leaves which is accompanied with a fake catalog entry as if it was an art installation. There are also some nice pics that are unaccompanied by a story, such as Amanda dead surrounded by wallabies.

However, too many of the pics are too similar, just Amanda lying face down in some location or other, and the locations are too similar for the differences to matter.

Also, I didn't really like Amanda's lyrics. I'm not that big a fan of her music anyways, and reading the lyrics misses something. It was like really bad poetry that's also completely nonsensical.

All in all, Neil Gaiman's stuff is OK, and the photography is nice, but all in all, it wasn't quite worth it. I don't regret reading it, but I don't think I'll read it again, except maybe some of the Gaiman stuff.