I am on a mission to read the entire Sandman series by Neil Gaiman by the end of the year. So far so good, but I have to say it was painful waiting three months for volume 3 as a greedy library patron seemed to have kept a magical hold on it for that long. I've requested volumes 4 and 5 that way I can read them back to back.
I am thoroughly enjoying this series. Dream Country, volume three of the series, was wonderful. I particularly enjoyed "Dream of a Thousand Cats." Now I love me some Shakespeare, but it was not my favorite of the four stories. My favorite line out of the four stories though is from "A Midsummer Night's Dream": "Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot." Spoken by the man of the hour, Dream or Sandman, whatever you'd like to call him, they're all the same. He's a minor character in these stories considering the series is named after him. I think Neil Gaiman is really hitting his stride here in incorporating mythology and folklore into the Sandman stories. I hope this trend continues through the rest of the series.
