REVIEW: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman

Pre­ludes and Noc­turnes by Neil Gaiman. Where does one even begin? I was curi­ous about Mr. Gaiman’s Sand­man series as I’m told repeat­edly, that’s it’s pop­u­lar. I had bought  End­less Nights not real­iz­ing that it was not the first vol­ume in the series. I rushed back to the store and got a copy of Pre­ludes and Noc­turnes. Here is the story so far:

In “Sleep of the Just”  and “Imper­fect Hosts” tells the story of an occultist group, led by Rod­er­ick Burgess or “Lord Magus”, who tries to sum­mon the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Death. The rit­u­al­is­tic cer­e­mony, however, is unsuc­cess­ful because what they con­jure and trap to earth, is the The King of Dreams. Quickly, they strip him of his tools (hel­met, ruby and sand pouch). Dream stays cap­tured on earth for 70 years.  Never speak­ing to his cap­tors, bid­ing his time, planning ret­ri­bu­tion, and watch­ing each one grow old and die, until finally, he is able to escape when one of the guards falls asleep. Note: The guards were always warned to not sleep and were sup­plied with stim­u­lants. End note.  After his cap­ture and escape, Dream’s jour­ney and goal is to reclaim and restore his dream realm and find his tools. The jour­ney for his tools is what makes up much of the first set of sto­ries. We run into some fas­ci­nat­ing char­ac­ters along the way, too.

A few remarks,  Dream goes by sev­eral names, most notably “Lord of Dreams, Sand­man and Morpheus.” Also, the sto­ries do start off rather ungainly and con­fus­ing (at least to me) at the start. It does pay-off for the reader if you just stick with it as the sto­ries began to become more fluid and inter­est­ing. Dream has to find his tools and sum­mons the Furies to help him. They only give him one answer a piece and the rest he has to find out for him­self. Dream is tired, weak but he must find his tools to rebuild his realm that was destroyed while he was gone. In “A Hope in Hell” ‚ he goes to the Gates of Hell and bat­tles a demon for his hel­met. In “Dream a Lit­tle Dream of Me” Mor­pheus is  paired with John Con­stan­tine to get his sand pouch back.  The next three install­ments, “Pas­sen­gers”, “24 Hours” and “Sound and Fury”  has Mor­pheus search­ing for his ruby and bat­tling Dr. Destiny.  

My favorite of this set of sto­ries has to be “24 hours”. Truly hor­rific and bril­liant. I went to the book­store yesterday, to grab the rest of the series and the book­seller from behind the counter,  asks me if I had seen this: the Absolute Sand­man with the first twenty sto­ries with new col­or­ing and added bonus mate­ri­als encased with leather. I bought it imme­di­ately. I needed a sec­ond read­ing any­way. There are to be four vol­umes of The Sand­man series released in bound leather for col­lec­tors. Sand­man series so far has been very enter­tain­ing. I am enjoy­ing it.  There’s plenty of adven­tures to be read and I can’t wait.  So, I passed my copy of Pre­ludes and Noc­turnes to my sis­ter to read while I enjoy the rest of the sto­ries in this vol­ume. Comic book novel fans shouldn’t miss this one. Espe­cially those new to the comic scene like me, put this on your list to be read. Absolute Sand­man: Vol­ume 1 (damn this book is heavy) has: “Pre­ludes and Noc­tures (1–8)”, “The Dolls House (9–16)” and “Dream Coun­try (17–20).” Enjoy.