dustydigger
12/31/2015
Early in the year I was reading Neil Gaiman's marvellous Sandman series in order,and was so frustrated that I was unable to get hold of book 4, Season of Mists widely reputed to be one of the best in the series,and pivotal to the series. I waited for many months and the book never came to the library. Lost,or stolen? I read all the rest, but felt an uneasiness that I never read vol 4. Last week, while exploring the shelves of another library system, I miraculously found vol 4 in a corner of a shelf. It had never been issued for years, since early 2010. Dont know why this had occured, it may have been shelved in the stacks for all those years. Anyway, I snapped it up, and it was the final read of 2015. And what a gobsmackingly amazing, scary, awesome, terrifying incredible read it was! At last later scenes about Morpheus, his friends and family make sense!.
I have been trying to finish a challenge for this year, to read a book that scared me,and I never managed such a book till now. This was gruesome, frightening, appalling, as we explored Lucifer Morningstar's Hell. This was not for the fainthearted, but the whole thing was a miraculous classic, one of the best of the Sandman series,and pivotal to grasping the overarching plot. Full of awesome reconceptions of traditional mythology, Gaiman always manages to shed new light on the traditional myths of Norway, ancient Greece, or Egypt, or whatever, giving them respect, but finding his own take on them. Full of horror and humour, running the full gamut of emotions, this was a fantastic piece of work, and jumpsright up there with some of the other books that impressed me in 2015, like Simak's Way Station, Brackett's Long Tomorrow, and several other top flight SF reads. Surely one of Gaiman's best works. Good stuff!