The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

3.5/5

I liked this installment. The Sandman decides to revisit hell to rescue a past lover. Once there, he finds Lucifer abandoning hell. The sandman is given the key to hell, the dead are rising, and competitors compete for ownership of hell.

I enjoyed the inclusion of different death gods. Egyptian, Japanese, Norse, etc. They make mention of the missing Hades. I assume it was for an inside joke and nothing serious though I'd have liked to see him and some aztec/indigenous american gods. A native american god would also have been interesting.

Like the other volumes, there are some tangents. One story follows that of a young boy at a boarding school. He's the only child there when the dead residents come back. It was rather sad.

Compared to the other volumes, I thought this was one of the better ones. The story was solid all the way through and flowed rather nicely. Some characters could have used more development (who were all his siblings again?), and there were a number of unanswered questions (did death go back for the boy?). Did Lucifer receive any punishments?

3.5 stars

Dream makes a trip to the realm of Lucifer and must deal with the repercussions of his actions.

Great series! Gaiman always keeps me in suspense with his Sandman stories. I can't wait to pick up the next volume!

I couldn't bring myself to give this that last star. I really liked the family meeting of the Endless at the start. The writing was simply superb and really enjoyable. It hit a little snag for me when Dream suddenly felt guilty enough to right his unjust condemnation of Nada to Hell. It just felt quite forced. But the rest of the chapters hinge on this decision so I guess it's just got to happen. While Dream geared up for a confrontation with Lucifer, his arrival in Hell proved to be a delicious twist and I totally didn't expect it. Still, while there is some sort of closure with regards to Hell at the end of this volume, the plot lines felt incomplete to me. I suppose this is setting things up for future volumes, but I just felt like it didn't wrap things up as nicely as the previous volume.

This review is really for the entire Sandman series.
I'm not sure I've ever found it so difficult to review something. I feel like I've been on a long bizarre journey and have just woken up. I'm pretty sure that was what Neil Gaiman was aiming for from the start, the series centering around the Lord of Dreams, Morpheus himself. While we follow Morpheus around and through interweaving tales we get amazing insights about the importance of stories, the human condition, family, mythology, nightmares, dreams, religion, faith, madness, life & death and the list could go on. There is so much packed in this series that I can't even put it into a category, it really is a category all its own. I haven't ever read anything like it and doubt I will ever again. It is fantasy of the highest sense. Poetic, meaningful, dark, funny, sad (okay in the last few there is a lot of sad), but also a lot about hope and new beginnings and changes. I feel like Dream, Destiny, Desire, Delirium, Despair, Death and Destruction are a pantheon of mythos I will never quite shake from my mind. Like the Greek gods, they will forever be apart of a mythology in the fabric of people's consciousness. They live there now in the back of my mind and when I encounter these things in my life, I won't be able to help but think back on Neil Gaiman's amazing story and colourful characters.
The artwork was always great and even surprising sometimes and inventive. I especially loved the Dreaming and it's heart where Morpheus' surreal and ever changing castle was. I feel like now that the journey is over, I need to start it over again, so that I can pick out all the things I missed the first time. See all the hints about where it was headed, to put characters into perspective now that I know their fates. I feel like I missed a lot, because there were stories within stories that I didn't realize were significant until after the fact. I can only marvel at its intricacy.
The imagination on display is vast and mind blowing and the way in which Gaiman can take flawed creatures or humans and give them hearts and voices and emotions that you carry with you through the entire series, is a testament to his character-building. I never thought I'd shed a tear for a pumpkin-head or raven or for a place that doesn't even exist, although I really wish it did.
I could go on and on about this series, but I'll do the only thing I can do and that is to recommend it to everyone, just as the comic book store employee recommended it to me. I have read very few graphic novels, so I can't compare to it to other graphic novels, but as a story completely on its own and of its own merits, I highly, highly recommend you give The Sandman series a read. Even if you only do it once, it will be worth it. You will see storytelling in a different way and it will stick with long after you finish the last volume.