Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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So close to five stars.

The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections by Neil Gaiman

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I kind of almost want to give this one five stars. And it was all short stories! I’ve been slowly making my way through Sandman since last year, but this is really the first time I feel like I’ve really gotten what this series was about. It was just great from beginning to end. Each of the nine stories were great in their own way, and they tied together thematically as well, but in that subtle way that sneaks up on you slowly. Normally, there’s […]

Triple Cannonballing with The Sandman.

The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You by Neil Gaiman

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Most people seem to like this one more than I did, but I still liked it. I didn’t think I was going to have much to say about it because it just didn’t really vibrate on my level, plus—and I can’t believe more people haven’t brought this up in their reviews—it really hasn’t aged well. But then I wrote quite a bit. This book focuses on Barbie, a side character (formerly married to Ken, natch) who last showed up in The Doll’s House. She and the […]

My favorite of the series so far.

The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists by Neil Gaiman

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My favorite since the first one. It’s been over thirty years since this was published, and it still managed to do things that surprised me. Morpheus, or Dream the Endless, has been informed that consigning his human lover Nada to hell for 10,000 years for the crime of rejecting him and wounding his pride was a not great thing to do, so he sets out to make things as right as he can, which means once again descending into hell and facing Lucifer. He makes […]

Short stories in comic form.

The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country by Neil Gaiman

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This is essentially a short story collection in comic form. The afterword notes that Gaiman needed a break from the main storyline after finishing up The Doll’s House arc, and had a few ideas he wanted to play around with. I found all of them to be satisfying enough, but none of them really knocked my socks off, either. The standout in the collection for me was the first one, “Calliope,” in which a novelist with a terrible case of writer’s block holds one of […]

“For love is no part of the dreamworld. Love belongs to Desire, and Desire is always cruel.”

The Sandman, Vol. 2: The Doll's House by Neil Gaiman

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I didn’t like this one as much as I did the first one, and I don’t think it’s because I read the Kindle version. The whole series is on Kindle Unlimited (the 30th anniversary editions), a service I’m already paying for, so why not try it out in that medium? The formatting on the Kindle version is actually pretty great when you get into the actual comic. The story zooms in on panels and focuses on all the right spots, and it’s big enough to […]

“All Bette’s stories have happy endings. That’s because she knows where to stop. She’s realized the real problem with stories—if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.”

Preludes & Nocturnes (The Sandman, #1) by Neil Gaiman

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This is one of those books that come heavy with the weight of other people’s expectations. I genuinely had almost no idea what it was about, only that the people who love it LOVE IT, and I had a general idea that it was pretty weird. The only thing I knew for sure was that Death was a character, because Gaiman spun her off into her own comic at one point. I added it to my TBR when it became apparent that I would probably like it if […]



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