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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Taking the good with the bad, July 22, 2002
Sandman, Neil Gaiman's wonderful creation, is the concept that this group of stories is based on. Like any story collection, this one has its hits and misses. Hits: "Chain Home, Low" What happened to those affected by Dream's disappearance? "Each Damp Thing" Barbara Hambly has a good grasp of Gaiman's cast of characters. Set in The Dreaming this one would have made a good comic. "Seven Nights in Slumberland" Little Nemo? Now Windsor McCay's work makes more sense. I think. Both Wanda stories. A character that certainly warranted more examination than the comic allowed. "Endless Sestina" For the sheer nerve of it. "The Gate of Gold" The flip side of "The Writer's Child," but much more fulfilling. There really are "good" dreams. "A Bone Dry Place" Dream and Delirium together again. "The Mender of Broken Dreams" The concept is not new, but it is so well written you won't care. "Valosag and Elet" There are so few folktales being written anymore. At least good ones. "Stopp't-Clock Yard" Captures the true essence of Gaiman's creation. This is another one that Gaiman could have written. Misses:
Desire stories. This character is tedious as all stories end up being variations on the same theme. Especially "The Witch's Heart" it goes on and on....
"The Birth Day" A clever idea but not fully developed.
"Splatter" A little obvious.
"The Writer's Child" Ditto.
"Ain't You `Most Done?" 32 pages long and I couldn't remember what it was about by the time I finished the book. And it's one of the last stories.
Advertising Clive Barker's participation. It's a frontispiece and it's Death not Dream.
Taking an existing character, whose popularity lies in a graphic medium and using him and his supporting cast as the basis of an anthology is a risky proposition. While this book is not entirely successful, it's definitely worth a read for the Sandman fan.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
cool book, February 14, 2002
This is a really very cool book, although you need a fair bit of the Sandman background for it all to make sense - I first read it when I'd only read the 'The Kindly Ones' sequence and some of it went over my head. Then I got the rest and suddenly quite a lot of things became clear... It loses a star cause there's no actual Gaiman stories (although his comments at the start of each book are nearly as interesting as the stories - 'what Gandalf's rock'n rolling younger brother would look like if he were secretly a pirate' is a truly funky description for anyone). For me the best are the Barbara Hambly, 'Stopp'd Clock Yard' and the 'Ain't you the most done' stories - the collection does veer pretty wildly between cool, cute 'n funky and seriously weird / sick.... Depends what you like. Like the comics, don't let children read it.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Faithful to the Dreaming, January 20, 2005
It is funny how one can initially misjudge a book. When I first picked this volume up it was because I saw Neil Gaiman and Clive Barker's names on the cover. Then, on first perusal, I saw that Gaiman had not even written the introduction. Moreover, Barker's only contribution was the frontispiece- a drawing of Death. Nor did I immediately recognize the names of any of the contributors to the collection. I felt cheated. I jumped to the conclusion that this was a hack written collection of short stories intended to exploit the popularity of the Sandman series. I threw the book down in disgust.
Then, a little over a year later, I came back to it. Upon actually reading it, I discovered that Gaiman handpicked these stories. Indeed, he actually wrote the brief introductions for each writer and story. As for the stories themselves, there are some hauntingly, lovingly, skillfully, written tales here. What is more important, most of them genuinely capture the atmosphere of the Dreaming from the graphic novels. I could not have been more wrong about this fine collection- it was exactly what I was looking for.
These stories are so faithful to the original that the reader might want to read the entire 10 volume Sandman Library before attempting it. There is much here that assumes a familiarity with the entire series.
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