Customer Reviews
A strong improvement over the first volume - By: A. Whitehead, 15 Aug 2008 
The second Sandman collection picks up from the last one, with the Sandman continuing the process of restoring the Dreaming to its proper state, & also introduces a whole slew of new characters & storylines that will continue to resonate within the series until its very end.
Rose Walker & her mother travel from the USA to the UK to mee an unknown benefactor who has paid for their trip. The benefactor turns out to be Unity Kincaid, a victim of the sleeping sickness that swept across the world between 1916 & 1989, whilst Morpheus was imprisoned by Burgess. Whilst she was sleeping, Unity was raped by an unknown assailant, & had a baby, who turns out to be Rose's mother. Rose & her mother are stunned by this revelation, but Rose also takes advantage of the financial largesse of her very wealthy grandmother to undertake a search for her brother Jed, who disappeared several years ago.
At the same time, Morpheus has detected the forming of a 'vortex', a dangerous focii of dream-energy that could disrupt the dreams of the entire human race & kill them. Before he can shut down the vortex, which takes the form of a person, he decides to use it as bait to lure out several inhabitants of the Dreaming who fled to the waking world during his imprisonment, such as the thoroughly amoral Brute & Glob, the personified dream-place Fiddler's Green & the Corinthian, created by Morpheus to be the 'ultimate nightmare'. This resultsin Rose & her family being placedin extreme jeopardy.
Several other stories are also wrapped around this one: we learn why the Sandman's former lover, Nada, was glimpsedin Hellin the opening volume. We learn that his younger brother/sister Desire is plotting something behind his back. We also meet arguably the Sandman's only true human friend, Hob Gadling, from whom the touch of Death was liftedin 1389, making him immortal. Once a century Hob & Dream meet at the same pub & compare notes on how their lives have unfolded over the past century. This story, Men of Good Fortune, is a stunning piece of work & one of the seminal chapters of The Sandman (alongside the likes of The Sound of Her Wings from the first collection & the forthcoming Midsummer Night's Dream, Three Septembers & a January, The Dream of a Thousand Cats & Ramadan). It also introduces Will Shakespeare, whose amazing writing skills are revealed to be the result of a pact made with Dream,in return for which Shakespeare agrees to pen two special plays for Dream. But more on them when they appear.
The Doll's House represents a quantum leap forwardin Neil Gaiman's writing & storytelling abilities. So many storylines revisitedin future stories are set up it's pretty breathtaking, from linking this version of the Sandman to the previous DC one (an ineffective, slightly bumbling human crime-fighter called Hector Hall) to the establishing of numerous characters we will meet again later (such as Lyta Hall) & the establishing of several new regular characters, such as Matthew, Death's new raven, & Fiddler's Green. It also features one of Gaiman's most effective moments of horror, with a convention for serial killers (inspired by the World Fantasy Conventions of the mid-1980s) giving rise to moments of both disgust & jet-black humour (panels on deconstructing the stereotypes of female serial killers or how to make money from your hobby). There's also some nice tributes to other comics: as well as the 1970s version of The Sandman we also get a pastiche of Winsor McCay's Little Nemoin Slumberland strips. As well as the obvious nod to Shakespeare we also get to meet Christopher Marlowe (who is dismissive of Shakespeare's first play, Henry VI, whilst his own masterwork Faustus is getting vast amounts of acclaim).
We also get some more clues as to what The Sandman is about. The legend of Nada shows that the Sandman has made some mistakesin his past & he needs to correct them, whilst Men of Good Fortune shows that the post-imprisonment Sandman is a slightly warmer person than before. A century spent alone has given him the chance to reflect on things & it's interesting seeing his cold, heartless side giving way more easily than before. The story ends with Dream confronting Desire & the immediate crisis solved...but Lyta Hall is livingin mortal fear of what Dream told her (read & find out), which sets up events much laterin the series.
The Doll's House (****) is a radical improvement on the first Sandman collection, Preludes & Nocturnes, & gives the series a sense of purpose & direction. With the story Men of Good Fortune Gaiman's writing reaches a strong new level of maturity & intelligence, whilst Collectors may be among the most disturbing comics ever created.
Promising start to an excellent series - By: A. Whitehead, 06 Aug 2008 If Watchmen is the greatest graphic novel of all time, then a serious case can be made for Neil Gaiman's The Sandman to be the greatest on-going comics series of all time. Running from 1988 to 1996, the series incorporated some 76 issues, collected as ten graphic novels (and more recently, four large-format prestige collections). Although an ongoing series, it was bound together by a long-running story arc that spanned its entire length, & told the story of Morpheus or Dream, one of the seven Endless who are manifestations of universal concepts (the others are Death, Delirium, Desire, Despair, Destiny & Destruction). Preludes & Nocturnes is the first part of the Sandman saga, collecting together the first eight issues of the series.
In 1916, an English sorcerer named Roderick Burgess attempts to capture & constrain Death, so that all humans will become immortal. The spell goes awry, & instead he captures Death's younger brother, Dream. Dream refuses to help Burgess with his quest for immortality & is left imprisonedin a magic circlein the cellar beneath Burgess' home. The absence of Dream is soon felt, as thousands of people across the world slip into a 'sleeping sickness' & cannot wake up. One of these people, a young woman named Unity Kincaid, is even raped & bears a child without ever waking up. Years & then decades pass. Roderick dies of old age & his son Alex takes over as Dream's captor. Finally,in September 1989, Alex accidentally breaks the circle (by driving his wheelchair over it) & Dream is freed. After visiting an original form of vengeance upon his captor, Dream sets about reclaiming the 'tools' of his profession & restoring his realm, the Dreaming, to its former glory.
Preludes & Nocturnes opens the Sandman sagain style, introducing the titular character (who is unusually front-and-centre for the duration of the story: many Sandman stories are notable for not featuring him prominently) & the world he lives in. Gaiman weaves an interesting story here. The Sandman's quest to find his pouch of sand, his gemstone & his helmet is a traditional mythic device, as is the descent into Hell to confront Lucifer to find one of the missing artefacts (thisin turn sets up the very end of the series, with Lucifer's vow that, "One day I shall destroy him," setting up future events). At the same time there's a lot of other things going on. Established DC Comics villain Dr. Dee abusing the Sandman's powers to torment a diner full of innocent people is one of the more disturbing things you're going to seein a comic. The story ends with a triumphant Sandman driven strangely morose by his success, & unable to think of something else to do, he goes to feed the pigeonsin Greenwich Village, where he meets with his sister Death, probably the most popular characterin the series. The collection ends on an upbeat note, as the Sandman begins the task of restoring his realm & his life.
Preludes & Nocturnes is a great story. It's clearly early days for Gaiman & the story creaks a bitin places. It's also rather more obvious than the later, more subtle collections, & the desire for a somewhat plot-driven narrative to hookin the readers means that a lot of the more reflective moments from the later collections are missing. At the same time, revisiting the collection reveals a host of details that crop up again later on, such as an early glimpse of Merv driving a bus (he doesn't reappear until The Kindly Ones, the penultimate collection) & the introduction of Nada, Dream's former lover whom he condemned to Hell for reasons that will later be revealed. The book also wears its influences a bit more obviously than later stories: The Devil Rides Out & the works of Alastair Crowley inform the Burgess sequences, whilst the gates of the Dreaming (the Gates of Horn & Ivory) are straight out of Homer & Virgil. Gaiman's use of established DC characters such as John Constantine & Dr. Dee was also an obvious strategy to attract other DC readers, but for those unfamiliar with the DC Universe, their appearance & the assumption of familiarity is a bit jarring.
Preludes & Nocturnes (***½) is an intruging opening to the series, ranging from mythology to the occult to superheroes (and villains) & back again, takingin multiple times, worlds & characters. It is a powerful work of the imagination, butin places feels constrained by being part of the DC Universe & has a few rough edges, the result of a writer near the start of his career but already showing great promise.
Excellent introductory background - By: MB, 02 May 2007 
My introduction to Sandman began with Endless Nights, which I was given. I was hooked, & decided to read the rest. Having made a start, I was surprised to see negative comments on this book. Certainly, it is not as polished as the later books, but it is invaluable as a background to understanding them. The introin Dolls House probably does quite well for providing this background, but it cannot possibly do nearly as well as does reading Preludes & Nocturnes. And, whilst it is not as polished, it is still very good indeed. [...]
A Dream Start - By: Mr. Jamie Martin, 05 Feb 2007 The criticism that this is not the best of the sandman series is very much undeserved. Its not, however the comics it contains rate among the most important of the 20th Centuary, & helped to create what would become Vertigo comics, establishing itselfin a trend started by Alan Moore on Swamp Thing & Jamie Delanos Hellblazer. Its dated a bit, but then so has Citizen Kane - And that is a worth comparison, because although both creators would do betterin their career, their impact at those times would never be better'd.
Those were heady days, when this kind of Comic book was unheard of. This was a risk. Like the Watchmen before it, Preludes is specialin that it dared to be different, & it succeded. Its not Gaimans best work on Sandman but it is his first work, & when it appeared it was unprecedented & unheard of. Moore, Miller & Morrison brought Graphic Novels into mainstream Bookshops, but Gaiman brought Book Buyers into the Comic Shops.
Its not something you can judge by comparison to later & now, but for what it was. If this had failed there would have been no later, people put their careers on the line for this.
Take it from someone who was there. This is the birth of the Modern Era of Comic Books. Sandman, Swamp Thing & Hellblazer are British Invasion of US comics.
A suitable homage to Alan Moore - By: Mr. A. Hoang, 07 Sep 2006 After being a little disappointed with Gaiman's opening gambit, Preludes & Nocturns I thought that Neil Gaiman was forever going to bein the shadow of Alan Moore, trying desperately to produce a story of the majesty of Swamp Thing. With this story, Gaiman finally comes to maturityin his storytelling, combining magic & dreams with murder & horror & finally reaches the peak he's been looking for. The beauty of the Dolls House is it works perfectly as a standalone novel but even better if read as a sequel to Swamp Thing. My advice? Read Swamp Thing first if you've not already read it, then take this on. It will be worth the wait.
