The Sandman

Let's start with the good: The art. Probably the best art of all of the Sandman series. The writing. Some parts are Neil Gaiman at his best.

The not-so-good: I was quite disappointed by the ending. It's way too abrupt. It feels like one episode or two are missing. In the many notes written by the different people involved in the making of the book (that can be found at the end of the book), Gaiman mentioned that he had to trim some ideas in order to fit the story into six episodes, and unfortunately, you can feel it. The end of episode 5 almost feels like the midway point of the story, even halfway through episode six, it feels far from being over. Then, a couple of pages later, everything is solved and resolved, somehow.

Beautiful artwork in this book, but it made the story harder to follow. Not seen pull-out pages before though, that was neat.

The story itself was (as promised on the cover) a prequel(ish) affair. Like previous stories, I come away feeling that I've missed some points it was trying to get across.

I've read the whole box now with the exception of the Dream Hunters, which I wasn't in the mood for. I'm glad I've read all of them, although some of the books felt a bit too disconnected for me. I'll try to re-read though, as it takes me a while to get into Gaiman books. It's been a nice way to spend a month though, on and off.

This was the perfect book to start 2016 with. Grand in scope, beautiful in art, and enchanting in words.

I need to re-read the original now.