More than ever before, we’re seeing things from the past Sandman stories come back to haunt Dream. We have Lyta Hall and her baby (from way back in the beginning), Nuala of the Fae, and the Corinthian (man he’s creepy) all back and ready to wreck havoc (in wildly varied ways). And that ending… knowing there’s only one more book makes me really look forward to finishing this series, as weird as that sounds.
A Tavern at the World’s End. Travellers from all manner of realities, thrown together. Stories around the fire.
The first magic spell is spoken by a 90-year-old retired Indian physicist named Suravaram Vidyasagar on 1st June 1972. It is one hundred and seventy- nine syllables long, comprising equal parts Upanishadic mantra and partial differential equation.
The effect of Vidyasagar’s spell is nothing at all. He has discovered what will later be called “uum”, the empty spell, which expends no mana and fails to rearrange the universe in any externally detectable way, but which then - crucially - returns to the dispatching mind and tells it so.
Destruction of the Endless is missing (and has been missing for a very long time). Delerium–the strangest by far–seeks him.
Oh it’s quite a story. I think this is the most we’ve seen about the other Endless yet, and it’s truely bizarre. I think that Delerium being a core point of view helps that along nicely.
Death was a little older than Dream. Things had the potential to die before they had the potential to dream.
The Endless are so fascinating. As it this story.
This time around, I think I’ll just start with the summary from Goodreads:
Take an apartment house, mix in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, a talking severed head, a confused heroine, and the deadly Cuckoo. Stir vigorously with a hurricane and Morpheus himself and you get this fifth installment of the Sandman series.
To reign is worth ambition though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
Wherein Lucifer (yes that Lucifer) is, after thousands of years, done with his job (yes that job) and decides to leave his keys to Dream to figure out what the Hell (heh) to do with.
It is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?
You all know the story, yes? A Count dressed all in black, an undead creature of the night, drinker of blood, vulnerable to garlic and a stake through the heart, all that? Well, here’s where it all came from, at least in the public consciousness, all of the common vampire tropes in one (long) book.
A bit of an odd one. Despite the series being named for Dream, herein we have a handful of mostly disconnected stories with Dream as only a minor character. They’re still absolutely fascinating and do give us a much deeper look at the world (both the analogue to our own world and the Dream). The second is especially funny, Dream as a cat. Sure. :D
Well worth the read.
Herein we get a bit more worldbuilding, seeing how Dream is taking back his world after decades of capture. For the most part, we deal with the fallout around a family of one of the women from Sandman 1 (the one who found herself pregnant), but there’s also a very well told story of a man granted immortality–on the condition that he checks up with Dream once every hundred years at the same old pub. Also a ‘Cereal’ convention (that took me longer than it should have). Of course.
It’s well written, beautifully (in the creepy sort of way at times) illustrated, and well worth the read. Onwards!