Customer Reviews

Dreaming: Beyond the Shore of Night

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I had finished reading the Sandman series not long ago, kinda thinking how much I would like to hear more stories of these fantastic characters, when I ran into this book.

It is made up of 3 short stories featuring Cain & Abel, Mad Hettie, and a few other Familiars from the Sandman series.

Story 1: "The Goldie Factor"- This is a story that centers around our favorite gargoyle, Goldie. Goldie gets angry at Cain for his continuous, mean behavior towards Abel. She realizes that she can't change the situation and runs away from home where her adventure in the dreaming begins... (this was my favorite of all the stories)

Story 2: "The Lost Boy"- Mad Hettie finds a young man who has been enchanted by the faerie people and helps him find his way home. Within this story is also the mystery of a key that Mad Hettie has stolen.

Story 3: "His Brother's Keeper"- Just another evening get-together at Cain's house.

It was nice to delve into stories focusing around the minor (but no less loved) characters from the Sandman series. The stories were basically good, but at times felt a little wonky (not a lot, but just a wee bit).

If you are looking for appearances of Dream or Death they do not show, but this shouldn't stop you from enjoying a good read and great art work.

"They walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap...Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap."
- A.A.Milne, THE HOUSE AT POOH CORNER

Alisa Kwitney's the editor. Gaiman acted as consultant rather than writer. Since Gaiman's involvement is tangential, THE DREAMING stories tend to avoid the use of the Endless, instead utilizing SANDMAN's supporting players. Cain and Abel appear in all the stories herein, although only briefly in "The Lost Boy" (wherein the Fair Folk, Mad Hettie, and Joanna Constantine play significant roles).

LaBan, Terry: "The Goldie Factor" (artist: Peter Snejbjerg) Goldie can't stand seeing Abel abused by Cain anymore, and can't protect him due to Cain's mark, so she runs away. The brothers, it turns out, don't know much about her; gargoyles are to be found guarding places where mysteries and secrets are to be found or celebrated, but Goldie's unusual among gargoyles.

The main plot revolves around Goldie encountering Tempto (the serpent from the Garden of Eden, the original pathological liar), who abandons his normal pastime of manipulating stray dreamers to trick Goldie into taking him into a mystery of the Dreaming he'd never be permitted to enter alone.

The most interesting part of "The Goldie Factor" to me isn't the plot, but the various outlying regions the brothers pass through in their search, and those they encounter: the Dream Exchange, where people can buy shares of *big* dreams; Terra Incognita (the 'crocodile hunter' type they encounter rides a horse with Prince Charles' face), and the place people go when they're killed at sea (Cain's temper is the same as ever). The dream of the first kingdom reflects yet another set of stories in Genesis.

The story seems flawed by continuity errors: Eve could've told the brothers Goldie's story at any time, and Goldie was male in "The Parliament of Rooks" but female here.

Hogan, Peter: "The Lost Boy" (artist: Steve Parkhouse) Far and away my favourite in this collection. Like the Lost Boys of Peter Pan, Brian Salmon was taken away from his homeland when found wandering lost - but the guardians of the borderlands stranded him decades in his future rather than in Never-Never Land (although to Brian, our present is nearly as puzzling). Fortunately, Mad Hettie takes an interest in him for reasons of her own, and is willing to help him in exchange for *his* assistance.

Kwitney, Alisa: The title of "His Brother's Keeper" comes from Genesis, Cain's confrontation with God after Abel's murder: Am I my brother's keeper? The story shares some elements with Gaiman's own THE WAKE; apart from sharing the same artist (Michael Zulli), the reader is similarly incorporated into the story. Cain's other guests have come to the conclusion that they're dead as the only explanation for the mystery of why they're here, awaiting their host's arrival.

The story also shares features with "The Parliament of Rooks" from FABLES AND REFLECTIONS (which was also set at a gathering of guests in the houses of mystery and secrets), as a member of the family - the third brother, Seth, in this case - turns up and requests a story: the *full* story of why Cain murdered Abel the first time. (The author's treatment of the idea may be unfamiliar to some readers; like Eve's story in "Parliament of Rooks", it's drawn from the Jewish theological tradition rather than being Kwitney's invention.)

Another spin-off of a Neil Gaiman series, this first collection of The Dreaming does a good job of channeling the original Sandman scribe's devotion to nostalgia and the esoteric.

Of the three stories, the best, by far is Peter Hogan's 'Lost Boy', about a time-lost British architect, the ages-old witch 'Mad Hettie' and the secret origins of America.

Like Gaiman at his best, Hogan is interesting, well-researched and more than a little sweet. It still isn't Sandman, but if the rest of The Dreaming is this good, it is nothing to sneeze at.

...but it's not Gaiman. But then, Neil set the bar at an extremely high standard, one which few can match, especially with regard to The Dreaming.

I would consider myself perhaps an intermediate in the world of Neil Gaiman. BOTH books about the dreaming are beyond masterpieces. his characters are colorful, the storylines are in depth and fascinating, and the artwork is phenomenal. to gain a better understanding of the sandman comics, read both books on the dreaming: beyond the shores of night and the gates of horn and ivory. definitely worth the money.