Once again, it’s been a while since I read a volume of Sandman, but this one is great, maybe my favorite of the series so far! Very Endless-focused, which is totally my jam, and the interludes tie in nicely with the main story.
Delirium, the youngest of the Endless, is longing for a reunion with her brother Destruction, who left the family centuries earlier. She entreats her siblings to help, and finally, a lovelorn Dream agrees to accompany her on her search, if only in the hopes that it will distract him from a recent heartbreak. The journey takes them through the waking world, where they look for other inhabitants of Earth old enough to have seen Destruction before he disappeared, but forces seem to conspire against the quest.
Because it bears repeating: Sandman does a lot of neat things along a wide range of stories that fit loosely within its themes, but for my money, its best feature is the Endless, and the otherworldly family takes the center stage here. Our main characters in this volume are Dream and Delirium, a great odd-couple sibling pairing. Dream is so self-serious and goth, and Delirium is just an undulating bundle of chaos – in other words, the perfect combination for a supernatural road trip.
Obviously, the focus of their mission is to find Destruction, so we also learn more about him, both through the search itself and through flashbacks. But each of the Endless makes one or more prominent appearances, and along with it, we’re given interesting tidbits on the various characters and insights into the family’s history. There are some particularly intriguing hints on Delirium’s backstory and on the twins, Desire and Despair, that I hope get explored further in later volumes.
I also like the idea of other long-lived beings scattered about the earth, former or forgotten gods who’ve integrated themselves into modern society, living on. Not that this is a novel idea or anything (hello, vampire lit!), but the way it’s executed here reminds me a little of American Gods, which makes sense, since that’s also Neil Gaiman.
The thing about Sandman is that you never really know what you’re going to get from one volume to the next, which makes this volume a little frustrating precisely because I like it so much. The story pulls at a lot of interesting threads and I want to get more on them, but I had no idea if anything here will ever be mentioned again. Every so often, I flip through the earlier volumes just to go, “Oh yeah, remember _________? I almost forgot that was in here!” With this one, though, I’m crossing my fingers that the choicest threads won’t be dropped.
Warnings
Violence, sexual content, language, drinking/smoking/drug use, disturbing images, and strong thematic elements.
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