Sandman: A Game of You (Volume Five)

Neil Gaiman

Look!  Another fancy shmancy cover!  I expected this volume to be a bit boring.  When I started reading, I felt like it was just a giant break away from the dramatic plot that’s been building throughout the last volume.  I was annoyed with what was going on most of the time, and I found myself only liking a few characters (most of them based off of stuffed animals) out of the bunch introduced.  Once I reached the end though, I felt a great sadness.  And not the “aww, it’s over” sad, but the kind of sad you feel at the end of your favorite character’s death scene.  My throat was all tight and I felt the need to be hugged by someone.  Even though the volume followed Barbie and all her issues, I think it was really about Wanda. And even if it isn’t, I think it should be.

I found myself wanting to dropkick Thessaly in the face from the moment she started interfering with Barbie’s dream until the end of the volume.  She’s a very abrasive character.  I mean the other characters (except for Wanda and Dream), were vastly obnoxious to read, but at least they were tolerably annoying.  Thessaly had me rolling my eyes every time she appeared.

And a random side-note: I read this while working out at the gym.  There was this hot guy walking next to me at one point.  He kept looking over at the pages as I got through them.  Of course, almost immediately after he starts peeking, I get to the part with the face on the wall.  It wasn’t enough to get me to stop reading though.  Oh yea, the people in my gym totally think I’m crazy.  And it might just be my volume, but there were a few places were the writing was very light and hard to read.  It mostly happened when Barbie was in her dream, I think during the snowstorm.  Anyone else notice it?  I couldn’t read two pages for the life of me, so I ended up catching a few words and calling it a day.

In any case, I liked the volume, though not as much as I enjoyed the last one.  I give it a 3.5/5