The Sandman, Volume 6: Fables and Reflections (New Edition)
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781401231231 |
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| Publisher: | DC Comics |
| Publication date: | 09/06/2011 |
| Series: | Sandman Series , #6 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 168 |
| Sales rank: | 83,835 |
| Product dimensions: | 10.12(w) x 6.64(h) x 0.37(d) |
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Fables and Reflections
4.3 out of 5
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6 reviews.
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The full review is posted at www.codyhamrick.com
Spoiler alert: While it is minor, there is at least one spoiler in this review (it’s buried. You have to look for it, but it’s there). If you want to read the book with a clean slate, go do that, then come back and read this.
I’ve been reading The Sandman comics for a while now. I bought the first volume when I was a sophomore in high school. I read the second and third when I was in undergrad, and then the fourth and fifth sometime during my gap year and graduate school. I finished the sixth volume, Fables and Reflections, this week.
Don’t get me wrong. I haven’t stretched them out because they’re tedious. Rather, it’s the opposite. The Sandman is one of my favorite comics…nay…one of my favorite narratives ever.
I love Neil Gaiman. I love his short stories. I love his novels. I love his comics and his movies. Is he a perfect author? No. He doesn’t seem too concerned with the structure of his works. He rambled sometimes and uses too few words at other times. In a lesser writer this would make for a sloppy mess. But with Gaiman’s stuff, I don’t know, it just somehow makes it better. His work is what it is because of these imperfections.
Who knows why? Who cares why? It’s good stuff; that’s all that matters.
Fables and Reflections is much like the other volumes in that Dream is not the main character, but he does appear frequently and play a major role. Unlike some of the other volumes (if I’m remembering correctly…that’s the drawback of taking years between reading them) each “chapter” in Fables and Reflections is a complete short story. The stories are only connect by the presence of Dream.
All the stories in this volume are great. A few stood out to me.
The opening story, “Fear of Falling”, is one of them. It’s the story of a theatre director that tells an actor in his current play that he’s going to drop out. Following this announcement, he has an encounter with Dream that determines the course of action he ultimately takes. The power of this story lies in Gaiman’s ability to write both “realistic” characters and his supernatural Dream characters side by side with the same believability.
“Three Septembers and a January” was another favorite of mine, mostly because Death makes an appearance. I loved the character of Death from the first time I encountered her in the comics. Being a Tori Amos fan (a hardcore Tori Amos fan) I loved Death even more once I heard Neil say that some of Death’s characterization became inspired by Tori once Neil and her met. (Side note, the friendship of Neil and Tori is an interesting one to explore. Several of Neil’s characters are inspired by Tori. In return, Tori frequently mentions Neil and his characters/stories in her songs. Go listen to a few Amos albums and see if you can spot the references, and then think about the role they play in the songs. But I digress.) If death is a person- with a form- I hopes it’s the form of Neil Gaiman’s Death. It’s so much more comforting to think that Neil’s Death is going to come calling one day instead of that creepy guy with the scythe. Death, not the character but the event, is the great eliminator. It might seem quaint to imagine Death as a cute, easygoing woman, but if you stop and think about it, imagining this version of death is an act of courage- an act of hope. Imagining Death in this form is to say death is not horrible, death is not the end. Death is a kickass woman who is so laid back and present in
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Another good volume.
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Neil Gaiman, need I say more?
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The next chapter of The Sandman. More genius within these pages. More story to take to a place as far away as the moon and as near as our ego.
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