Author: Neil Gaiman | Illustrators: Mike Dringenberg / Chris Bachalo / Michael Zulli | Page Count: 228
“…if it touched you, you could wash and wash until your skin was tattered and bloodied, but you’d never be clean again.”
Book 2 of 10 in the Sandman saga is where the series really begins to separate itself from the larger DC Universe; it feels like a self-contained world populated by a collection of believable people not dependent on past histories. Morpheus becomes a more three dimensional character, not the insubstantial entity he was at the beginning. Everything is more focussed and immediate. The stories also undergo a drastic change. They are much better developed this time in terms of interconnectivity; some of the subject matter is a lot darker and more adult. One part of the story I found very uncomfortable reading but at the same time the very idea that it could ever happen was intriguing.
Dream orders a census of the Realm and discovers some of the inhabitants are missing. He deems it his responsibility to find them and bring them back before they can do damage in the waking world. Gaiman lets his imagination run free with those. We meet some more of the Endless family and begin to notice something unusual about all of them. Some of those bit players I mentioned from book one return and upset the apple cart. Gaiman gets the opportunity to create a house full of weirdos and studies them like a sociological experiment.
I could go on and on about the ripples this book creates but it’s best if you discover for yourself. If you didn't give up at the beginning of book one your patience is well rewarded in book two.
The book collects together Sandman issues 9 - 16
4½ we don’t shit where we eat out of 5
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