Sandman: A Season of Mists

Neil Gaiman

There are many of my acquaintance, and many I've read (including Steve Erickson, who wrote the intro to the third Sandman volume), who believe that A Season of Mists is the crowning achievement in the Sandman series. I am not one of them; I think Dream Country is a tad better. A tad, mind you; A Season of Mists is a lovely thing as well, and like all of Gaiman's graphic-novel output, deserves to be read.

This fourth book is where Gaiman really breaks Sandman away from its horror-comic roots and turns it into the kind of twisted-fantasy thing it is ultimately remembered as. A pretty odd statement for a book that deals with Morpheus going to hell to fight Lucifer for a soul he condemned ten thousand years before, but there you go. Here, for the first time, we meet most of the Endless (one is still elusive), we see a (temporary? We don't yet know) change of heart for Lucifer, learn more about some of the other pantheon's in Gaiman's universe (and are introduced to others), and get some interesting clues about the land of Dream itself.

If you've followed the Sandman series this far, you will definitely enjoy this one. If you haven't, either start at the beginning or star with Dream Country, the third book in the series, but not related to the overall storyline (and thus it can stand alone).