/Neil Gaiman /Dave McKean, Chris Bachalo and /Mark Buckingham, illustrators From the pages of THE SANDMAN LIBRARY Neil Gaiman tells the story of the one day every hundred years when Death, older sister of The Sandman, walks among humans to gain a better understanding of.
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
The High Cost of Living is a continuation of Harvey Award-winning fantasy writer Gaiman's series detailing the cosmic duties of a loose family of seven immortals. Not quite Gods, they embody realms of psychic experience: Dream, Desire, Despair, Destiny, Delirium, Destruction and Gaiman's very popular character, Death. Reaper, yes; but Death's not very grim as she goes about her business visiting the just-about-to-die and ushering them into their new existence. In this story she meets Sexton, a teenager contemplating suicide, and they end up searching New York City to find a witch's heart (the old hag hid it centuries ago, it's a witch tradition), so the old girl can hide it again. Up pops the Eremite, an evil wizard type, out to steal Death's mysterious necklace, who makes the usual threats against life and limb. Gaiman has created a character sweetly at odds with her modbid duties; dressed like a Satanic rocker, she's as pretty as a cheerleader and even more upbeat. While Gaiman brings a gritty urban contemporaneity to the fantasy genre, the story also suffers from a TV script-like sensibility--danger-defying quips, the good-hearted overweight black neighbor, melodramatic villain. Nevertheless the combination of wry mystic immortal and MTV slacker produces an engaging chemistry. Top-notch production, and although the illustration is a bit stiff, it's stylishly rendered and very nicely colored. The introduction is by pop singer Tori Amos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The woman you are about to meet isn't called Death just because the tuff-sounding name compliments her heavy eye make up and black jeans. She really is Death, the reaper, the one who takes you away when you have had it. It turns out the cloak and the scyth thing were just bad press; there's nothing grim about her after all. Neil Gaiman fashions Death after the story in the Caballa where the Angel of Death is so beautiful that upon finaly seeing it (him or her)you fall in love so hard, so fast that your soul is pulled out through your eyes. He didn't want a death that agonized over her role, or who took grim delight in her job, or who didn't care. He wanted a Death that you'd like to meet, in the end. Someone who would care. I think he succeeded. Though there is a family resembalce between her and her younger brother Sandman she is in many ways his opposite, sensible, delightful, and nice. This novel version of the three part mini series that helped launch DC-Vertigo follows Death through the streets of New York in 1993. It's turns out one day in every century Death takes on mortal flesh, better to comprehend what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter tang of mortality: And this is the price she must pay for being the divider of the living from all that has gone before, all that must come after. She embodies the 16 year old Didi, whos family recently died in a car accident. We enter clueless, as Sexton does. As his understanding grows about her true self so does ours. The plot twists and drops out from under your many times,leading you on a merry goosechase of emotions. You may even find yourself turning back a few pages to re-read and try to find out what you may have missed, but in the end all is explained, leaving you with that curious, empty, "what-if?" feeling in the pit of your stomach. That almost always leads us to pick it up and enjoy it again. I have thoroughly enjoyed this insite to the workings of the world. I am certain you will as well.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Meet Sexton Furnival. Sexton is a well-spoken, intelligent lad, whose best friend is the mute, wheelchair-bound kid in the apartment down the corridor from he and his mother's (an unfortunately not quite burned-out hippie) and a dead ringer for Kurt Cobain (both physically and in attitude). Here's what Sexton isn't: in love with anyone, or hating anyone. In other words, his life ain't feeling particularly Hollywood right now. He doesn't feel the point to Life. So, in typical short-sighted 90's-youth fashion, he's going to take his own life. In a garbage dump, of all places. And for his trouble, he gets pinned under a fridge.
Enter his savior, a young gal by the name of Didi, who we (being the faithful fans of Gaiman's Sandman that I know we all are) instantly recognize as the one and only Death of the Endless, looking slightly less pale, more chipper (if that's possible) and a little younger (about 16) than usual. She's spending her one day-per-century as an orphaned
girl living alone in NYC. Sexton takes the information in stride. ("Uh... right. So. I suppose you must do a lot of drugs.")
Problems ensue, of course. Mad Hettie, who has popped up in Sandman (Preludes & Nocturnes, for the uninitiated), holds Sexton at gunpoint (well... pointy broken wine bottlepoint), demanding that Didi go off and fetch her heart for her. She's hidden it, you see, and forgotten where she left it. And a chap by the name of "The Eremite" is after Death's signature ankh she wears about her neck.
Here's what Death: The High Cost of Living isn't:
Plot-heavy. All the better for it. Both plots sort of fizzle, but in good ways. This story's not about would-be masters of life and death (that plot ends with Eremite being kicked out of a restaurant by the owner) or an old woman getting her heart back (but a sweet moment it is indeed); it's about a kid regaining interest in Going On.
It isn't Hollywood, and all the melodrama which that word summons up. What there ARE, are lots of Gaiman moments. Understated, fleeting, quiet, human moments that make you fall in love with bit characters. Especially in the sequence at The Undercut club. Foxglove sings a ditty about that poor Judy girl who died in the aforementioned Sandman vol.1 and Hazel, her very-pregnant lover, who relates the pain of nicotine-withdrawal during pregnancy. Theo, the thuggish, unsuccessfully double-crossing acolyte of the Eremite, meets with a bitter end, but his passing shows us more about Death's passion for life than anyone knew. My favorite is the anonymous soul at Undercut, who relates her "friend's" brush with childhood sexual abuse and subsequent attempted suicide to Sexton, only to have him give her the brush-off. Sexton and Didi shine together, whether locked in a warehouse, playfully tossing around a Russian doll; perusing the merits of hot dogs' chemical aftertaste; or discussing her Day in the Life by a water fountain in Central Park.
(I could be wrong, but isn't that the same one that Dream was sitting in, feeding the pigeons, when Death first walked into our unsuspecting lives in Sandman #8? Really need to brush up on my New York geography.)
It isn't an "R-rated" human-misery-fest. It's amazingly very PG-13. Let's check the key words again, shall we? Death. Suicide. Sex abuse. But aside from very occasional cursing and one instance some barely "on-camera" violence, this is something that anyone can pick up. It's one of the few Vertigo books I own I'd feel 100 percent confident my family would read and love. Bachalo's cartoony/sketchy art is expressive, magic and real. At a lean 100 or so pages, this is really a direct book. It's got a story to tell, and it tells it, unlike some volumes of The Sandman. (Though it does tie into the second Death mini, Time of Your Life, but that's neither here nor there, as I've not read it.) If "It's a Wonderful Life" had been made in comic form, in 1993, this is what it would be (and who wouldn't take a Winona Ryder look-alike over Clarence, the second-rate... sorry, second-class angel any day of the week?).
Oh, and there's a couple o' neat supplementary tidbits: Tori Amos' introduction, Tom Peyer's text piece on the history of the character Death, and, of course, the "Death Talks About Life" six-pager illustrated by Dave McKean, which gives frank information about AIDS, condom instructions and how life is a sexually-transmitted disease. Useful stuff, that.
So. In a sentence: one of my personal favorite of Gaiman's works, and I hope yours too. Pick it up and feel glad to be alive.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Neil Gaiman's portrayal of Death as a sweet Gothette with a sense of humor and a marvelous joie de vivre is far from the usual cloaked figure with scythe. In Death: The High Cost of Living, she adventures with a somewhat suicidal young man named Sexton, showing him the intrinsic value of living. They encounter the darling dyke duo, popstar Foxglove and here dear domestic and pregnant love Hazel the chef, who provide a glimpse of the glamorous life and its toll on otherwise loving relationships. Gaiman's clever turns of plot and stolidly real characterization rivet interest and unfailingly engage reader attention. There is so much here to appeal to a young adult and older teen audience, but the depth of character and complexity of plot will resound with and delight more mature audiences. Longtime comics readers will quickly become Gaiman fans (and what pleasures await them in his Sandman and Books of Magic tales!) and those who either have never know or had abandoned the four-color medium should give it a try. This and Death: The Time of Your Life will not fail to please and to distract.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Interesting story, but characters a little incomplete.
Very short but lots of fun to read! Every year Death comes back to the living world to experience life as a human. This story chooses one of those days. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Lena Tumasyan
Review of Gaiman's Death:Cost
I'm sorry to say I was disappointed with this comic. The incredibly short narrative provides an interesting encounter with the character death, but there is little development or... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Ryan S. Mease
Great illustration, boring book
If you enjoy top rate illustration, then buy this book. If however you're looking for a well thought out concept for a story, pass on it. Dumb and boring.
Published on October 17, 2009 by moonlightmadness
Wonderful
This makes for a great addition to the Sandman universe. The bonus features in here are also nice. For any Sandman completist, this is a definite must-add. Read more
Published on September 10, 2009 by M
Great Read
This graphic novel is great. The ending is funny...the VERY end, but this is about life and living, not worrying about the rigors of life, but living and realizing the living may... Read more
Published on June 22, 2009 by Ileia Smith
A Living Death
This Graphic Novel is decent, but doesn't compare to The Sandman Series. It is still worth a read.
Published on February 26, 2008 by Rubb
something of a sweet girl
Death is really a sweetheart. Gaiman did great portraying her in the way he did. Now, I wasn't a huge fan of this book, though I like the characters. Read more
Published on February 12, 2008 by adead_poet@hotmail.com
light and fluffy story
For all that I adore Neil Gaiman, I've never gotten into 'Sandman'. It's mostly that graphic novels have never done anything for me. Read more
Published on January 2, 2008 by Nadyne Richmond
Death is really a sweetie
For me, as for many fans of the "Sandman" series, the best character is Death. Gaiman conceives her not as a frightening figure in a cowl and carrying a scythe, but as an... Read more
Published on September 16, 2007 by Michael K. Smith
Beautifully done
The art, the dialog, the themes-- all brilliant. The art is not overly complex, which may distract from the importance of the story, nor is it too basic a companion to the story. Read more
Published on August 23, 2007 by Mr. S. Kilpatrick II
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