The Sandman, Vol. 4: Season of Mists

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?

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.