CBR14 Book 52: "The Sandman, Act III" by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs

Page count: 444 pages

Rating: 4.5 stars

Act III of the full-cast audio adaptation of The Sandman was suddenly released with what felt like absolutely no fanfare or previous advertising. Suddenly, one day, it was just there on Audible. This installment covers the two collections Brief Lives and World's End, as well as some of the stories collected in the anthology volume Fables and Reflections (the very first volume I ever read). It means we finally get the full and tragic story of Dream's son Orpheus and his beloved Euridyce, whose love story is doomed on their wedding day and only gets worse from there. The Song of Orpheus is a much better introduction to Sandman and the Endless than Preludes and Nocturnes, in my opinion, but I may also be biased, as this is where my love affair with the graphic novel began. 

Regé-Jean Page really does an amazing job as Orpheus. His voice is incredibly pleasant, even when he's just talking. And when he sings, you really can believe he could persuade the king and queen of the Underworld to stretch their rules, just once. 

In Brief Lives, the youngest of the Endless, Delerium (who was once Delight) wants to go searching for the missing member of the family, Destruction. She tries to appeal to several of her siblings, but is rejected by both Desire and Despair. Dream, who has recently broken up with a mortal lover, is even broodier than normal, and agrees to come with her mainly to distract himself from his wounded feelings. The journey doesn't entirely go as they expected, and a lot of people end up dead in their wake. The price Dream has to pay to finally keep his promise to his youngest sister is a high one, indeed, and sets in motion events that will reverberate through the rest of the series. 

World's End is Gaiman's tribute to The Canterbury Tales, with a number of travelers from all over time and different worlds, stuck in a large inn at the end of the world. There is a mystical supernatural storm that has stranded them all there, and they spend their time telling stories. There are stories, within stories, within stories. Quite a few of them feature one or several of the Endless or other characters we've come across over the course of the story in some way, and all are imaginative and fantastical. Our POV character for this section is Brant Tucker, voiced really well by Wil Wheaton. 

I haven't checked, but I'm assuming that at some point, possibly completely unannounced, Audible will release Act IV, which I'm guessing will collect the longest of the Sandman stories, The Kindly Ones (possibly my favourite, even though it's deeply tragic) and The Wake. As I'm highly doubtful that Netflix will commit enough time and money for the TV adaptation to ever get that far, I'm going to be waiting with bated breath, to finally hear the entirety of one of my favourite graphic novels finally adapted. 

If you're not already a fan of Sandman and the audio drama adaptations, this is not the place to start. If you liked what you heard in Acts I and II, I don't think you'll be disappointed with this installment either. 

Judging a book by its cover: Not really my favourite of the images they've used, but I like that if you look closely at the figures swirling around the big head, you get some hints of the stories within. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR12 Books 65-67: "The Sandman, part 1" by Neil Gaiman and Dirk Maggs

Page count: 632 (covers the collected volumes of Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country)

Audiobook length: 10 hrs 54 mins

Rating: 4.5 stars

#CBR12 Bingo: Happy (I never thought that Sandman could be adapted into an audio story, so this made me very happy indeed)

Official book description:

When The Sandman, also known as Lord Morpheus - the immortal king of dreams, stories and the imagination - is pulled from his realm and imprisoned on Earth by a nefarious cult, he languishes for decades before finally escaping. Once free, he must retrieve the three “tools” that will restore his power and help him to rebuild his dominion, which has deteriorated in his absence. As the multi-threaded story unspools, The Sandman descends into Hell to confront Lucifer, chases rogue nightmares who have escaped his realm, and crosses paths with an array of characters from DC comic books, ancient myths, and real-world history, including: Inmates of Gotham City's Arkham Asylum, Doctor Destiny, the muse Calliope, the three Fates, William Shakespeare , and many more. 

In July 1998, my life changed forever. In those days, I still lived in a suburb of Oslo and didn't necessarily visit the centre of the city all that often. When I did, I always took a trip to Avalon, the dedicated fantasy/sci-fi/all things nerd book shop there (the book shop sadly closed long ago now). On a display table near the front of the shop was Fables and Reflections, by no means the first volume in the long-running Sandman series, but an excellent introduction. I think Neil Gaiman had recently visited Oslo for the first time, and the shop was promoting his most famous work. I had never read any graphic novels before but was drawn by the description of the series. I bought the book, started reading it on the bus on the way home, and my mind was blown. I had never read anything like it before, and I was utterly hooked on the stories of dreams and nightmares, the family dramas with references to all manner of mythology, classical literature, comic books, and the like. 

This was a time when Norwegian libraries were not particularly well-stocked with fantasy of any kind, and certainly not English-language comic books and graphic novels (I'm happy to say that that's changed massively over the last 20 years - one of the public library branches in Oslo is now dedicated entirely to comics and graphic novels in different languages. Hence, I had to buy each volume before I could read the full story. My records show that it took me about a year to get all ten volumes of trade paperbacks, some of which I've now had signed by Neil Gaiman himself. 

Funny story, one of them isn't actually signed to Malin, because my dear friend Ben was a bit of an idiot back when he took my copy of Preludes and Nocturnes to a signing in Newcastle. This was back before I really knew him, and he was still just my then-boyfriend, now-husband Mark's school friend. See, Ben and another of Mark's school friends, Ruth, had initially joked that his Norwegian girlfriend's name was Helga. By the time Ben was taking one of my precious trade paperbacks to Newcastle to get it signed as a favour, he'd met me several times, and knew my name was Malin. But when he got to the front of the signing line, and Mr. Gaiman asked him who to sign the book to, Ben (lovable moron) blurted out Helga, and only after he'd left the shop remembered that it was not, in fact, my actual name. This is also why I have a signed copy of Anansi Boys, where Neil Gaiman apologizes to me for getting my name wrong. 

 

Anyway, the long and rambling introduction to this review is included to show just how long Sandman has been part of my life, and how much it means to me. It was my introduction to graphic novels and the writings of Neil Gaiman. It showed me a whole new way of storytelling. I never thought it could be adapted well in a million years (I'm still skeptical about the Netflix series). I've rarely been so happy to tell you I was wrong. This was an excellent adaptation, and I think I liked parts of it a lot more than the actual original comics issues (while a lot of the artists and artwork used in the series was state of the art back in the 1990s, it's sometimes a bit "grimy-looking" now - unless you have the stunning Absolute Sandman volumes, that cost a small fortune). 

So how do you successfully adapt what is both a written and a visual medium, you ask? You hire an excellent ensemble cast, so that all of the various characters we meet in the pages of the first three volumes of the graphic novel opus are voiced by different and distinct voices (there's a huge ensemble of people who do multiple voices over the course of the audio drama, but never in the same scenes, making it much easier to keep track of who's speaking at any given time). You also get someone to narrate and describe the various scenes and characters in them (or occasionally add descriptions of the setting and characters to the inner monologues of one or several of the people in a scene), so the listener is told what they would have seen on the page if they were reading the comic. That the narrator here is Neil Gaiman himself (whose voice I find very soothing) just seems extra fitting.

I read several reviews of this audio drama that complained that with very few exceptions, everything is kept exactly as it was in the original 90s comics, with no attempts to adapt or bring it more up to date. This was mentioned as a criticism, I didn't think it was a problem. I also know the source material being adapted exceptionally well, having read the comics multiple times. Even so, as I kept listening, I actually pulled my trade paperbacks off the shelf to halfway follow along. To someone who's never read the original graphic novels, it may be harder to follow the plot, even though the team who adapted did a very good job in filling in with background sounds to give you an idea of action and plot.

Each issue of the comic is one approximately 30-minute long episode, with little audio credits and everything. It felt like I was listening to an old-fashioned radio play, and I loved it. How well the adaptation works for you may also depend on how you feel about James McAvoy. I love him and his voice, and think he did a splendid job voicing Lord Morpheus. Kat Dennings worked surprisingly well as Death. The only one I wasn't entirely happy with was the guy playing Desire, whose voice just didn't "fit" with my mental image of what it should be. 

A brief trigger warning towards the end. In both Preludes and Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country, there are elements of horror. The issue 24 Hours, for instance, where a number of people are kept trapped in a diner by an escaped Arkham Asylum inmate in control of Dream's ancient ruby and are slowly driven increasingly more insane over the course of the story was even more horrifying than it is on the page because all the various people got their own voices and felt more real than they do when you just read them. It was harder to stay detached. There are also stories of serial killers, and child abuse and women being raped and beaten - so be aware of that. 

Now I'm left impatiently waiting and hoping that this becomes enough of a success for Audible that they'll choose to adapt the rest of the series as well. Recording audio dramas must be something that should be perfectly doable even now, with production halted on so many things due to Covid-19.

While I'm choosing to use this for my "Happy" square for this year's bingo, it could just as easily have fit with "Nostalgia", since this was such an important part both of my adolescence and so ground-breaking for comics in general during the 1990s. 

Judging a book by its cover: I have tried to track down the name of the cover artist for the dark, broody image of Dream, without any luck. It's a good depiction of Lord Morpheus, and I like that it looks like he himself is made up of sand or dust and kind of blurring at the edges a bit. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR9 Book 13: "Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman

Page count: 304 pages
Audio book length: 6hrs 29 mins
Rating: 4.5 stars

When it was announced that Neil Gaiman was doing a book of Norse myths, I was, not to put to fine a point on it, giddy with excitement. I've always been a mythology fangirl. I love the Greek and Roman myths, the Egyptians, but as I am Scandinavian, the Norse myths are obviously among the ones I grew up reading, even as a young child. I had several books of the Danish comic book Valhalla, so I knew several of the stories before I even knew they were the ancient myths of my people.

In the introduction to this book, Neil Gaiman says that his first encounter with the Norse gods were through the works of Jack Kirby in the Marvel universe. Mr. Gaiman has of course featured several members of the Norse pantheon in several of his own works, like the epic Sandman series or his very popular American Gods. He also says that the Norse myths are probably the ones that we know the least about and where many of the stories have gotten lost, as no one felt they were worth keeping alive. I appreciate him commenting on the fact that the goddesses of Norse mythology have gotten the shortest shrift of all. There are not all that many stories that survive about the Norse gods at all, and history being what it is, clearly no one felt that the goddesses were all that important (except of course that everyone seems to want to marry Freya - she is clearly the greatest prize to be won).

I got the audio book, because Neil Gaiman's a wonderful narrator whose voice I find incredibly soothing. Having him tell me the myths of my people, vaguely fictionalised to work better as stories was lovely, and I kept forcing myself to stop between stories, as I didn't want the book to end. While I was familiar with a lot of these tales from my childhood and mythology obsessed teenage years, there were also stories I hadn't heard or read before. The one where Loki steals the hair of the Lady Sif, Thor's wife, and has to figure out a clever way to replace it, ending up with the Norse gods getting possession of their greatest treasures, while Loki nearly loses his head in the bargain was a new one. As was the one about Kvasir and the mead of poetry.

Loki, Thor and Odin feature the most prominently in these stories. Loki is the trickster who pretty much always causes, but generally also sorts out all the various incidents that befall the gods. It's strange how he is accepted as one of them, but also constantly stands apart, the literal father of their eventual downfall. I enjoyed these stories a lot, but really do wish the women had been a bit more prominent. By making a faithful retelling, Gaiman couldn't give the ladies a bigger role than they already have, but especially the treatment of Loki's poor wife towards the end of the stories (after he's done something so nefarious that even the gods can't stand by and let him have his way anymore) is heartless in the extreme, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. So I can't give a full five stars.

For anyone who already likes Gaiman's writing, or is interested in learning more about the Norse pantheon, this is a must have book. It's not exactly very long, because there aren't all that many stories. I had a wonderful time listening to this book and will no doubt revisit this book many times over the years, to remind myself of the myths of my people.

Judging a book by its cover: It's not exactly a very fancy cover, as these things go, but it doesn't really need to be either. A dark, possibly slightly star-spangled background, with Thor's legendary hammer, Mjoenir, at the centre. I especially enjoy the shorter handle now that I've heard the story of how the hammer came to be made in the first place. Neil Gaiman doesn't need a fancy cover on his book of Norse myths. Either it's going to be something you get, no matter what the cover design, or it's probably going to be a book you pass by, no matter what exciting things they put on the cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR8 Book 118: "Fortunately, the Milk..." by Neil Gaiman and Chris Riddell

Page count: 160 pages
Rating: 4 stars

While Mum is away on business, it's up to Dad to make sure that his son and daughter have everything they need. Like milk for their cereal. Dad goes to the shops, but is gone for really rather a long time. When he returns, he explains to his children why he was gone for so long. It's a story of adventure, danger, space aliens, time travel, vampires, angry South American gods, pirates and the amazing Professor Steg. The entire thing is beautifully illustrated by Chris Riddell throughout.

I got this book back in spring of 2014, when Neil Gaiman was on a short visit to Oslo to talk about his work with refugees. He also did a very engaging reading from this book, which had just been translated into Norwegian. This was when my friend Ida was still pregnant with her first child (she's currently expecting her second). I mention this because my friend's baby bump was the reason we didn't have to queue for hours to get to meet Mr. Gaiman and get our books signed. As we were about to find our place in the long, long line, a nice lady came over and asked if we wanted to be fast-tracked, so to speak. I got this book, and my copy of The Kindly Ones signed.

Obviously this is a children's book, for slightly older children, who enjoy being read out loud to or who can read the book themselves. There's just enough silliness and adventure to keep a child interested throughout. I read it during the October Read-a-thon and it was a quick and entertaining read, a sort of palate cleanser between longer books. Not exactly as deep or as brilliant as some of Gaiman's other books, but a nice book nonetheless.

Judging a book by its cover: The version I have is illustrated by the brilliant Chris Riddell, who has also done illustrations for the UK versions of Coraline and The Graveyard Book. I really like his art and there is certainly a lot happening on this very colourful cover. I think it's quite obvious that this is a children's book, and a rather eventful one at that. There's Professor Steg and the Floaty-Ball-Person-Carrier. There's the Dad and his precious carton of milk. What you can't see in the picture is that the orange and gold on the cover is actually in metallics, so very shiny and extra psychedelic. It's a great cover.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR7 Book 111: "American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition" by Neil Gaiman

Page count: 656 pages
Audio book length: 19hrs 39 mins (Full cast edition)
Rating: 4 stars

Shadow is serving time in prison, patiently keeping his head down and counting the days until his release. He longs to get home to Laura, his travel agent wife and passes the time learning coin tricks and dreaming of what they will do together once he's out of jail.

Only a few days before he's due to be released, Shadow is told that Laura was killed in a car accident, along with Shadow's best friend Robbie, whom Laura was apparently having an affair with. As Robbie was supposed to give Shadow a job once he got out, there is suddenly no longer anything for Shadow to return home to. All his dreams for the future are shattered in one fell swoop. Hence, when he meets the mysterious and enigmatic Mr. Wednesday on the way to Laura's funeral and is offered a job, there is nothing to keep him from accepting.

The job as Mr. Wednesday's driver, body guard and general helper is quite a lot different from what Shadow was expecting. Travelling across America, they meet up with a large group of strange and eccentric individuals. There is a storm brewing, a reckoning to be had. There is going to be a war, between the gods of the old worlds and the gods of the new America. They all need attention and belief to thrive and Mr. Wednesday is rounding up as much support as he can for the old gods. What is Shadow's role in all of it? Why won't Laura's ghost leave him alone? What will happen when the storm finally breaks?

American Gods was first released in 2000, and I own the hardback of the original edition, which I read way back when it was new. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the book, a deluxe edition with ten thousand extra words (an author's preferred version) was released, initially in a very limited print run, and later given wide release. I kept thinking I wanted to re-read the book, but with so many shiny books out there, I just never got round to it.

Then it was announced that Starz had the development rights and that Bryan Fuller, visionary show runner of great shows like Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies and most recently, the stunning and incomparable Hannibal is set to turn it into a series, and my motivation for re-visiting the book increased. I got the Full Cast edition of the audiobook on Audible some time before I clumsily fell on my way home from work and concussed myself, but stuck with nothing to do but listen to things and knit, I got through the last two thirds of the audio in about a day.

In this book, Englishman Neil Gaiman explores America, the country of immigrants, and what has made the country it is today. In between the main story of Shadow and Mr. Wednesday and their road trips to recruit more old and nearly forgotten deities around the country, there are little "Coming to America" chapters, highlighting the many different and diverse groups of people who came to the continent, from the very first nomads who crossed the land bridge in the north of Alaska, to the Norsemen, the slaves, the immigrants in the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, all bringing the beliefs of their former homelands with them.

It's a sprawling book, with great scope and ambition. While Mr. Wednesday is a secretive character who keeps his cards extremely close to his chest, Shadow himself is quite a cipher. As the book progresses, we discover more about why he was in prison, and what in his past may have brought him to the attention of Mr. Wednesday in the first place. It's been so long since I read the book that I didn't remember many of the finer details of the plot at all, and certainly not the major revelations in the climax of the book. So while this was a re-read, it was more like discovering the book again. I still think Mr. Gaiman is at his best when he writes shorter fiction, be it the single issues of his magnificent graphic novel Sandman, his short stories or his books for children. American Gods is probably still his most impressive novel for grown-ups, though, and I'm very much looking forward to what it's going to look like on screen.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#Readathon October 2013: Hour twenty-two

Currently reading: Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone
Pages read in the last hour: 73
Pages read in total: 1122
Books completed so far: Dark Currents - Jacqueline Carey
Adventures with the Wife in Space - Neil Perryman
Love and Other Scandals - Caroline Linden
Murder Mysteries - Neil Gaiman and P. Craig Russell
Mini-challenge: Turn the Page from Reflections of a Bookaholic

Turn to page 32 in the book you are/were reading. Find the most entertaining phrase to complete the following sentence:

"I would rather read than talk with you sometime later any day"

#CBR5 Book 65. "The Ocean at the End of the Lane" by Neil Gaiman

Page count: 181 pages
Rating: 5 stars

Our unnamed narrator returns to the old farm near his childhood home after a funeral in Sussex. He remembers his childhood friend Lettie Hempstock, who lived in the old farmhouse, at the end of the lane near his house, and while looking out over the pond in the back (which Lettie claimed was an ocean), he slowly remembers the strange and horrifying events of his childhood, after one of his parents' lodgers stole their car and killed himself, not far from the house. There are dark and inexplicable consequences, and the three generations of Hempstock women help our narrator try to set things to rights.

This is Neil Gaiman's first book for adults since Anansi Boys in 2005. As that book is probably my least favourite of all his works, with the notable exception of Marvel 1602 and Eternals (which were so boring I don't even have the words), I was hoping that the excellent writing in his books for children and young adults would carry through to this story as well. I had very high expectations, because for all that I think his shorter fiction (comic book issues, short stories) is what he does best, it was just so unexpected and exciting to discover, early this year, that he had a new book out. Of course, this dark fable is a sliver of a book compared to, for instance American Gods. It's much more like Coraline, both in size and tone.

If you like Neil Gaiman, and you've read things by him before, you will recognise a lot of different things in this book. There's a child protagonist, there's really creeping and effective horror, there's a wealth of mythology and magical realism and the locations are so faithfully rendered that you feel as if you're in the story. I also think, as confirmed by the author himself, and his wife, Amanda Palmer, that it's his most personal book yet. It's thoughtful, and magical and creepy as hell, and I absolutely loved every last page of it, so much so that I also used one of my Audible credits to get the audio book as well. That way I was able to have Neil Gaiman read me parts of the story, with his wonderfully soothing voice, which came in very handy when I had to clean my office at work, and really only wanted to read. If you're not a fan of Gaiman, this book is likely to convert you. If you are a fan, you need to read this book. It's wonderful, in every sense of the word.