Scott William Foley

Living under the shadow of Sandman and American Gods, Gaiman has difficulty impressing me with other works because those two are so utterly superb. 

Anansi Boys is an unfortunate example of just such a case. 

It tells the story of Fat Charlie, the son of the trickster god Anansi.  Early on in the story his father dies, and Fat Charlie finds himself more relieved than anything.  Fat Charlie’s life continues on with the dull routine most of us suffer, until his long-lost brother appears at his doorstep.  From that moment on, Fat Charlie’s fiancée, job, sanity, and freedom are put in jeopardy.

Anansi Boys begins rather slowly and takes its time establishing the main characters’ traits-perhaps too much time.  However, once the book gets rolling about three-quarters of the way through, it moves very quickly and becomes a bit of a nail-biter.

I wouldn’t consider Anansi Boys one of Gaiman’s must-reads, but it also isn’t something I’d say you should avoid.

The Kindly Ones encompasses the direct consequences of the earlier volume, Brief Lives.  In Brief Lives, Lord Morpheus (Dream) changes, for better or for worse.  The actions that lead to such change must have ramifications, and The Kindly Ones details such repercussions.

In The Kindly Ones, Lyta Hall, a character who has made sporadic appearances throughout The Sandman series, is convinced that Dream has stolen her baby, Daniel.  She goes to the women known as the Kindly Ones for vengeance, and even she couldn’t predict the outcome.

Making use of virtually every character in The Sandman mythos, The Kindly Ones is a truly epic tale that brings us to a point in Dream’s existence that would seem, based upon Brief Lives, inevitable.  At times The Kindly Ones gets a bit muddled and verbose, but in the end, it was all worth it.    

I’ve had the privilege of reading The Sandman series in completion and for the first time in the last few months, and The Kindly Ones is testament to the genius of Neil Gaiman.  I don’t know if it was on purpose or a happy accident, but The Kindly Ones makes use of virtually every storyline preceding it and concludes such a mammoth story … it’s nearly unimaginable someone could dream up such a story.

My only suggestion: skip the introduction and read it after you finish The Kindly Ones.  It does reveal a fairly major plot point, which, upon retrospect seems obvious, but even so, I would have liked to have avoided the introduction’s cataclysmic revelation.

I thought Season of Mists was my favorite The Sandman volume until I read Brief Lives. 

Brief Lives absolutely has it all-drama, action, comedy, romance, and philosophical ponderings.  It focuses upon Morpheus rather directly-unlike other volumes where sometimes he exists within the stories only peripherally-as he helps his sister Delirium track down their brother known as Destruction. 

Destruction is part of The Endless.  The other members of The Endless are his brothers and sisters Destiny, Death, Dream (Morpheus), Desire, Despair, and Delirium.  He long ago abandoned his post and family, choosing instead to exist on his own terms.  Addle-brained Delirium unusually makes up her mind and decides she wants to reunite with her favorite brother.  She is very surprised when she manages to enlist the aid of her brooding brother, Dream, especially after all her other brothers and sisters refuse to help her.

Dream accompanies Delirium on quite a journey as created by Neil Gaiman who makes brilliant use of legend and mythology, both preexisting and self-manufactured.  They finally find Destruction, but things don’t go exactly as expected and incredible possibilities are revealed.

I love this volume so much because something happens to Dream that hasn’t really occurred in the previous volumes-he changes.  While always dynamic in dialogue and appearance, Dream was not a character who seemed to evolve.  I enjoyed Lord Morpheus just as he was, but now that Gaiman introduces a changing Dream, a Morpheus who suddenly empathizes with mortals and family members, he becomes all the more fascinating.

Furthermore, the afterward by Peter Straub was absolutely riveting.  Brief Lives was enthralling on its own, but Straub’s afterward analyzing the volume makes it, and the intricacies of Gaiman’s artistry, all the more impressive.

I’ve heard much about The Sandman series for many years, and so last summer I finally decided to experience it for myself.  The first volume was adequate, but it didn’t “wow” me as much as I expected.  Probably because, by this point in time, Gaiman’s concepts had been copied and recopied so many times by so many other writers that the original held little distinction.

I took solace in the fact that Volume III of the series was to be the one that set The Sandman beyond anything else in the comic book medium that came before or after.  Sadly—for me—it didn’t electrify.  Good?  Certainly.  Great?  No.

So, believing the opinions of several friends can’t be wrong, I still pressed on.  Volume IV, Season of Mists, proved to be the one.  This is the volume that completely and utterly “wowed” me.  From the beginning to the end, this was a tightly woven story packing emotional, philosophical, intellectual, and conceptual punches that did not fail to capture both my imagination and respect.  The character of Morpheus is visually interesting, but it was not until this volume that he began to fascinate me as a well-rounded character.

The premise is simple in Season of Mists.  Morpheus realizes he long ago made a mistake for which he must atone.  It is how he deals with coming to this decision and the ramifications of going about executing it that astonished me.  Gaiman’s imagination is limitless in Season of Mists, pulling from established myths and legends as well as creating his own.

The art, like all of the volumes, is rather hit or miss.  Luckily, the image of Morpheus is so striking and the stories so good that the art is easy to overlook.

Finally, I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Harlan Ellison by any stretch of the imagination, but his introduction to this volume is delightful and is alone worth the price of the entire book.