Worlds' End

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.