Ratings97
Average rating4.5
After being caught in the vortex of a reality storm, a group of travelers find themselves at the Worlds' End inn where they share stories of the places they have visited and the people they have met.
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I can't decide which I liked better, the previous volume or this one. Despite the volume's minimal focus on the Endless siblings, I'm still very much entertained by the tales told within. This volume is another one with several short stories spun into a much bigger arc - and to be even more specific, it's series of stories within stories within stories. Stephen King's introduction really put the focus on this aspect of storytelling.
The tale begins with two Americans who got caught up in a strange storm, and ends up in a place at the end of worlds. Travellers of all sorts end up in that place and exchange stories to pass the time. Each of these stories has their own theme and superb art style, all somehow very fitting to the story being told. There's also some underlying themes and hints of inspiration and touches of mystery that I can't quite seem to grasp. Making it just that much more tantalising to me. It even puts in little seeds of doubt as to what really happened from the point of view the American.
This volume is like a spin-off from following the Endless around, like a telescope spying into distant places, and you having to fill in the gaps in between on what reality really means. This is a great volume.
Found this the most original volume of the series. Various creatures all get stranded at an inn and tell their stories.
This series is a combination of little stories, where each chapter is basically a different story, longer stories that take up a full volume, and of course the overlying story of the Sandman's development in his world and with his family. In my opinion, the shorter the stories, the better.
This volume really plays with the stories within a story style of this series, by going what I would call “full Inception style”. This whole volume takes place in an inn full of curious characters, making it sort of a continuous story. However, each chapter is a different character telling a story, making it feel more like a collection of little stories. Then it goes further when a bunch of the chapters are about characters who hear unusual stories. Next thing you know, you're reading a story within a story within a story, and in one chapter, there's another level of stories, which results in just getting lost in an ocean of little stories. Then in the last chapter, you get pulled right out of the ocean of stories to remind the reader that this is all in the world of the story of the Endless.
This was an incredibly unique little volume full of great stories and fantastic art: each character's story had its own artist, which was conceptually brilliant. If someone asked me “What's so special about The Sandman?” I'd probably hand them this volume.
I'm holding back on 5 stars, because as with other volumes, there were parts of the larger story that felt dissonant, like there was a number of ideas Gaiman wanted to portray, and a few didn't quite hit the mark. For example, one of the characters points out that there's no relevant feminine perspective in any of the stories, but then when given a chance to tell her story she just talked about being uninteresting and lonely. Was that the feminine story? It wasn't even a story. It was like Gaiman noticed he had no good female perspective, then decided to point it out himself so that people can't criticize him about it. An odd tactic to address gender inequality in his series, and one that in my opinion didn't work.
Still though, I liked most of what is going on here, and with the last chapter, I'm eager to see what's next.
Featured Series
11 primary books15 released booksThe Sandman is a 28-book series with 11 primary works first released in 1988 with contributions by Neil Gaiman, Hy Bender, and 27 others.