Book #45

The Sandman: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

The third book of the Sandman collection is a series of four short comic book stories. In each of these otherwise unrelated stories, Morpheus serves only as a minor character. Here we meet the mother of Morpheus's son, find out what cats dream about, and discover the true origin behind Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream.

Of the three so far, I've enjoyed this one least. As the blurb above states, Dream appears very briefly in each of the stories, and in the final one doesn't appear at all. Although there's no denying they were all well-imagined, I didn't connect with any of the stories as much as I did with the ones in previous volumes. 

I feel here Gaiman had got his introductions out of the way, and had room to stretch his legs a bit. Don't get me wrong, the stories were typically horrifying and twisted; they just didn't grip me as tightly as they should have. And don't get me started on that one about the cats. 

In all, I was severely unimpressed with this volume. I really enjoyed what was going on in The Doll's House, but felt this was completely cut off by these unrelated narratives. I'm sure this will be an incredibly unpopular opinion, and you may cry that I just didn't get it. Maybe I didn't, but I remain hopeful that volume three will be a strong bridge between two and four.