The Sandman: Book of Dreams

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Gaiman assumes the role of narrator for his latest book, offering an intimate reading that steals one's attention almost immediately and keeps the listener involved throughout. As the story Continue reading » Gaiman (The Ocean at the End of the Lane) again delivers masterful compositions and style in his third collection. His decision to include poetry is vindicated by the concrete images in "Making a Continue reading »

Book Review: The Sandman: Book of Dreams – Lucy A. Snyder Book Review: The Sandman: Book of Dreams – Lucy A. Snyder

In Guran’s fifth edition of eclectic nightmares, new and veteran authors blend psychological terror and supernatural wonder into disturbing hybrid tales, which confront “that which we do not know.” Continue reading » I shelved this as fandom because it's basically high-end Sandman fanfic. Fortunately, most of it is very very good. A few are wrenching; only one was too dull to finish. I enjoyed recognizing names that would become more well known later - Susanna Clarke, for example, makes an excellent contribution.

Yet it is Freud’s former friend and rival, Carl Jung, to whom Gaiman’s idea of The Dreaming owes a greater debt. Morpheus’s shared realm of dreamers is the fictional expression of Jung’s notion of the collective unconscious, a place of archetypal figures, symbols, and images that repeatedly appear in all our dreams. I enjoyed the character Dream, or Morpheus, because of the way he manages to achieve any goal without even lifting a finger. He has an air of power around him. He is interesting with the way he goes to achieve his goals, he usually threatens but never has to go through with the threats.

The Sandman: Book of Dreams by Neil Gaiman, Paperback The Sandman: Book of Dreams by Neil Gaiman, Paperback

Like most anthologies, this is a mixed bag, i.e. some stories are better than others. However, even the best don't measure up to the standards of the Sandman comics, so I don't recommend it; at the very least, it's a book to borrow rather than buy. An entrancing collection of stories based on the World Fantasy Award-winning Sandman comic book series by Neil Gaiman—the basis for the highly anticipated Netflix series and hailed by the Los Angeles Times Magazine as “the greatest epic in the history of comic books”—including contributions from Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Susanna Clarke, Tad Williams, and Gene Wolfe, among other celebrated names in fantasy and horror This is a 'coffee table' book, full of beautiful color excerpts from the series, as well as other graphics. Gaiman’s Sandman combines both caring and threatening aspects. A figure committed to protecting dreamers and The Dreaming, the place where we go in dreams, he also holds grudges and punishes dream creations who challenge his benignly authoritarian rule. This is a collection of 18 stories by various authors (not Gaiman himself) who have written their pieces based on Gaiman's great concept of the Endless and of Morpheus, the Sandman, the King of Dreams. I only found two of them to be compelling--hence the three stars. But the two stories themselves are 5 stars for each. These two were the only ones to really bring the Dreaming World into the tale.

I'm the author of YA, graphic novels and novels for adults who still feel young, at least most of the time. Recent works include GILT, a graphic novel about time-traveling women of a certain age; Cadaver & Queen, a YA Feminist Frankenstein meets Grey's Anatomy tale, and Mystik U from DC Comics, which features Zatanna and other magical characters in their first year at college. I also co-host a Sandman podcast, The Endless, with Lani Diane Rich. a b Gaiman, Neil( w)."The Origin of the Comic You Are Now Holding (What It Is and How It Came to Be)" Sandman,no.4(April 1989). The sandman has been present for a very long time in folklore and fairy tales as the man who puts sand in the eyes of children to make them sleep. DC Comics unveiled a sandman (millionaire Wesley Dodds) replete with fedora, cape and gas mask in WWII; then Karen Berger brought in Neil Gaiman in 1987 to revise and revitalize “The Sandman” to what we all know him to be today. Bender, Hy (1999). The Sandman Companion. New York: Vertigo ( DC Comics). p.52. ISBN 1-56389-644-3.