Neverwhere

I was given this to read back in the summer by a good friend of mine and it's been sitting on my desk ever since. I don't know why it took me so long to get around to it, but I sucked it up and had a hard time putting it down. I imagine that the next time I'm in a book store I'll be picking it up. Neil Gaiman is a master-storyteller. He takes the heroes journey and does absolutely marvelous things with it in this story of a regular man who discovers that London is actually separated into two places, the London Above that he's always known, and the London Below that is more mysterious and magical than this buttoned down Londoner is comfortable with.
You absolutely fall in love with the hero, Richard, as he makes his way around this world, trying to help the pixie girl, Door (adorable in her own right).
It's a fantasy book, but it's so much more than that. I know that a lot of people are turned off by the idea of fantasy, but I have to say that it shouldn't be the case with this book. The characters and themes are so damn compelling. It all feels very real, despite how ridiculous it all seems. And the book itself almost feels like a love letter to London, and how it uses the city as a character and not just a backdrop is something quite spectacular.
It's hard enough to get me to read a book, but I might even re-read this before long. I see that there is a graphic novel version - so I'm curious how that has been handled. I noticed that Netflix has the British mini-series that was made of it - I clicked on it to see what it was like, and as expected, it was kind of horrible. I might give it another shot though.
As a filmmaker whenever I read something I'm hoping that it'll inspire me in my own writing, or perhaps be a project for me down the line. I can't imagine I'd be in position enough to do something of Gaiman's, but if I was ever to make a big film, this is the kind I'd want. It's smart, fun, but it's full of real human emotion. It's a lovely piece of writing. Thank you for sharing your talent with the world, Mr. Gaiman, I'm not sure what we can do to repay you.
So needless to say, buy this book. Now.

Death: The High Cost of Living

Inside of Gaiman's Sandman series are loads of fascinating characters, one of my favorites is his sister Death. She's got the sunniest disposition of them all. She loves Disney movies, she's a sweetheart really. And with witty little remarks like "It takes just as much effort to be nice as it does to be creepy" she's my kind of girl. So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that there was a spin-off in which she is focused upon.

This book plays with the oft-used idea that once every century Death takes a day to live as a mortal, to remind her what the people she takes life from go through. Today she's spending the day with Sexton, a teenager who has decided that life is just too 'meh' to bother living.

I have to be honest and say that I was kind of let down by this. I still love Death here, and if you're a fan of her it's worth reading for her alone - she's done justice here - but the story that she's in, I could really care less about. It could be that this book is now over a decade old and the teen-angst-woe-is-me thing has been really over-played, but I just found this story to be underwhelming. It was surprising to learn that Gaiman had planned to make a film version of this as well. One particularly interesting thing about this book is that, at the back of it, there is a comic-PSA where Death speaks directly to the reader about AIDs and HIV and it instantly took me back to being a teenager in the early nineties when it seemed like every celebrity was doing some kind of PDA to promote awareness of the desease. Pretty fascinating, definitly a product of it's time.

There is another Death spin-off, but I can't see myself rushing out to buy it. I'll pick it up eventually for my love of the character and Sandman in general - but I just, like Sexton, felt a bit 'meh' about the whole thing.

Sandman Vol 10: The Wake

And so it ends - although there are a bunch of spin-offs and epilouge type books - in fact I think that there is officially an eleventh book that Gaiman made years later, and perhaps I'll get around to it one day, but for now I'll take a break from Sandman - that is after I read the Death spin-off that he did (well one of them anyway). Although I'm quite eager to start The Walking Dead...
I was pleased with how this wrapped up - although if it were I, I would have put the actual wake part of the book after the individual stories - it ends so perfectly well and then there are the tangents (which are quite nice). I like the idea that this world continues on in a new direction - leaves me with a smile on my face. The art work in this book is unlike any in the volumes that preceed it. It's gorgeous and it makes it feel quite personal and a bit delicate. The art involved in Sandman has always been quite impressive and unique but this book stands on it's own in that regard.
This series often frustrated me with it's tangents, despite them being well written - but like I've said elsewhere it's probably because I loved the main story with Dream so much that any time we were away from it I just wanted to get back to it. I'll miss that character - he's wonderful. I have to give a big thanks to Mr. Scott McLaren for loaning me this series to read.
If you're a comic fan, and especially enjoy fantasy and sci-fi then it's a no brainer - you absolutely must read this series. I'm sure that I'll even pick it up one day should I find it used.

Sandman Vol 9: The Kindly Ones

And after my previous complaints the series comes back in fine form and fighting shape. This is a phenomenal volume - and rightly so - it's essentially the end of the series, save a wrap-up volume, which I'll read next and probably very quickly. I don't want to give away any of the ending of this great story arc. This is where Gaiman goes above being a masterful storyteller, which he always is, to being a master storyteller. He's weaving several storylines together effortlessly and finding them all meeting up in the end.
I'm not one to go into specifics because I don't wish to spoil things for people. Just know that, if you're like me, and often you find that Sandman often has too long of tangents in-between the main, awesome, story - know that every now and then you'll be rewarded with the brilliance that is this volume.
Also I was tickled a bit at how many characters from previous volumes found their way into this one. Very much looking forward to the conclusion!

Sandman Vol 8: World's End

This volume did very little to appease my desire for this series to get back to it's main story-arc. It's another collection of other stories that, more or less, do not really involve Dream besides being a very-side character in some stories and not involved in others at all. There's some great stories going on here, and sometimes stories within stories within stories but, in this volume especially, I found myself wondering what the hell was the point? Gaiman is a master-storyteller in terms of story itself, but I'm growing tired of these tangents. If I was buying this series on a monthly basis I don't think I would keep coming back. There are two volumes left so I'll finish it up for sure - but I have to say that as much as this series delights me it frustrates me all the same. I imagine it's because I love the stuff with Dream and The Endless so much that when we're aware from it I just want to get back to it. So I suppose that's a good thing.

Sandman Vol 6: Fables & Reflections

As you can see I took a little hiatus from this series, and from comics in general. My life is a constant balance of reading, writing, and watching, and the balance was more towards watching - which is mostly because I haven't been taking the TTC for the last two month, which is where I do the majority of my reading - but now I'm back on a regular commute for a bit so I'll get a chunk of reading in again - and I've got a stack of comics and books alike to read, but first up to finish is Sandman, 'cause it's a loaner.
So I messed up and read volume seven before I read this one - not that it really matters, Sandman is kind of designed in a way that each volume is more or less standalone - however in the next volume a major story arc starts, and so I'm really looking forward to getting back into that. This book right here is what I like to call a hallway (a term I steal affectionately from Mr. Scott McLaren), it's in-between things. It's a lot of stand-alone stories, and for the most part they're fun enough - but this was one of my least favourite installments. There's a great story-arc near the end with Dream's son, but the rest is mostly just filled up with one-off stories that are entertaining and interesting enough on their own as he plays with history and how Dream is part of everything. I mean - that's what's fun about Gaiman in this series - you get a sense that he's a kid in a candy store playing around with different ideas and never feeling bogged down to a format or anything like that - and it works well for the series in terms of adding flavor, but I want stories that link, and this volume was just a little weak on that.
Favourite Quote: "without dreams there could be no dispair"
Highlight for me was seeing Dream and Death as children.

The Sandman Vol 7: Brief Lives

Definitely a return to form. This book has a tone unlike any other. It has moments that are wonderfully morbid, and then suddenly we're thrust with something so comically mundane. Gaiman is a master of floating around tone and make something uniquely his own. And watching Dream go on a road trip with Delirium (sadly, formerly Delight) is one of this series' high points. The quest is to look for one of the Endless (Destruction) who abandoned the family some three hundred years ago. And it signals, I believe, the beginning to the end of this series in a way. At the very least it sets in motion the idea that the Endless may not just be as important in the scheme of things that they've always been lead to believe. I'll be taking a break from this series to enjoy the final Scott Pilgim (party tonight!!!) but then I think I'm going to try and finish the series before my trip to the UK (in which I think I'm going to try and read The Walking Dead finally...).

Gaiman says that you can read these books in any order, and I'm sure that he's right, but I think if you can swing it, read them in order.

The Sandman Vol 5: A Game of You

I always feel a little exhausted after reading Sandman. And for good reason. It's dense. It's full of ideas and it's relentless in it's execution of them. There is a bit at the end of this where one of the characters comes to this realization that most people probably have thousands of worlds inside of them, and that's definitely true for Neil Gaiman. Even when this series is taking place on earth it still feels like it's unique to the characters specific to that world. I love the little connectors that he does, linking Foxglove back to Judy who was in the… first book… perhaps the second. And this book delves deep into fantasy more than the others.

I wouldn't say that this is the weakest in the series so far, but coming off of the last one, it didn't grab me as much. I enjoyed it, and there was some interesting things going on including a horrific dream sequence involving two babies…

Read it because it's part of the series, but it didn't knock my socks off.

The Sandman Vol 4: Season of Mists

Finally got back into reading this series. And now that I've finished this particular volume I can start reading the spin-off series Lucifer. I really really loved this volume. We start off treated to a family reunion of the endless, and are then propelled into, probably, the most interesting Sandman story to date. Lucifer has decided to leave Hell, so he kicks everyone else, locks the door and hands Sandman the key to do with as he wishes. But first we get a really awesome tour of hell - I'll say little because the details of the tour and the ideology that comes out of it are a lot of fun.

In the middle of this really intriguing story of Dream trying to figure out whom to give Hell to, we get this side story that gives us a glimpse of the ramifications of Lucifer kicking everyone out of Hell. The dead, many of them, come back to earth, and for a young boy stuck at boarding school, it'll change the course of his life forever.

Okay. Stopping there before I ruin it all. I like this series more and more with each volume. It's a dense book, but it's worth it.

The Sandman Vol 3: Dream Country

This was an interesting volume. It was four stand-alone stories all revolving around different periods of Sandman's life. William Shakespeare made a short appearance in a previous volume and we get the pay-off to that here in a wonderfully bizarre explanation that 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was commissioned by Sandman to pay tribute to creatures he knows from another dimension. I don't want to ruin the fun of it, but there's some lovely meta-things going on. One of the other stories is, essentially, a long winded explanation of what happens while cat's dream. It's brilliant, and harsh, and sad, and wonderful. The first and last stories in this volume were just kind of 'meh'. The first, "Calliope", felt a little predictable.
Now, to be fair, they're well written - they look fantastic. But now the bar for Sandman has raised, and they just don't meet it as well as some of the other books do.
Gaiman is a fantastic writer because he's a great thinker. He's excited by ideas. They influence him. I imagine he'd be a great guy to have a few pints with. A good friend of mine has given me a novel of his (geez... how pathetically long has it been since I've read one of those?!), so I look forward to that, as well as the rest of this series. I imagine I'll probably pick up my own copy of it at some point.
In the back of this there is a Gaiman script, which I look forward to studying. The script format of comics baffles me. There doesn't seem to be a standard format. If anyone knows of one, please advise. I'm anal like that.

The Sandman Vol 2: The Doll's House

I knew I'd be hooked after two. Well played, Mr. Gaiman, well played. What I really love about this series, now that I'm starting to realize how it works, is that it's just one big universe. And the central character of that universe is Sandman. This volume seemed to have a stronger story-arc than the last and it'll be interesting to see if the other volumes do the same. I love how this one is vaguely tied to the last one through Unity, the woman who was raped and had a child while in her dream-state. Stuff like that makes me feel like I'm in good hands.
Got one more in my stack and then I've got some others to get through before I return to this series.

The Sandman Vol 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

So it took me a LONG time to get through this book. Partly because I've been busy, my commute to the new edit suite is a bit shorter, and because... it took me a while to get into it. I probably could have put it down about a third of a way into it. But I said to myself, "Self. There are ten volumes in this series. There has to be a reason for that. Give it at least two volumes before giving up on it." And while I'm not completely on board with it, it definitely picked up steam. (*SPOILER AHEAD) There is some wonderfully disturbing stuff in this book, but the most of all is with Sandman's sister Death, when she reaches into a cradle, carefully picks up a baby and the baby asks, "But... is that all there was? Is that all I get?" And she kindly replies, "Yes, I'm afraid so." As a new parent, that's the kind of stuff that stops me cold with the shivers. It's so simple and so delicately done, and for me it completely eclipses the more grotesque things that happen just prior to it.
I've been loaned the first three volumes of this, so I'll probably get through at LEAST those before making a decision to read the whole series or not. I've still got a stack of my own stuff to read, and I desperately want to re-read the Scott Pilgrim before the last book comes out. Ahh, time management.
So it's hard for me to say if I recommend this or not. It doesn't seem to have a real form or structure - which may be wonderfully refreshing - or wonderfully frustrating. Stand by...