Good Morning Bookworms!

It’s review time again!

Today I’m sharing my review of Preludes & Nocturnes, Vol 1 of the Sandman series by Neil Gaiman.

This is a buddy read I did with Gigi aka The Beachy Reader. We were originally going to read The Good House, but we weren’t enjoying it as much as we thought we would so we switched to this.

I’ve read a bunch of Neil Gaiman’s books and I’m a fan, so I was happy to dive into this one. What did I think? Keep on reading!

Blurb:

In PRELUDES & NOCTURNES, an occultist attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother Dream instead. After his 70 year imprisonment and eventual escape, Dream, also known as Morpheus, goes on a quest for his lost objects of power. On his arduous journey, Morpheus encounters Lucifer, John Constantine, and an all-powerful madman.

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The Review:

I gave this graphic novel three and a half stars.

I’m relatively new to graphic novels, but having read a number of Gaiman’s books, I thought I had a fairly decent idea of what I was getting myself into.

Note to self, don’t make assumptions like that again!

This graphic surprised me in many ways, some of them good, some of them not so much.

In a nutshell this graphic novel is about an occultist that captured Dream, Death’s brother. Once Dream escapes his prison he embarks on a journey of revenge as he seeks his objects of power to return to his kingdom.

First off, I have to mention the cover (the new one). Can you just say creepy? It reminds me of the Necronomicon and instantly made me want to read it.

The artwork was decent overall, just keep in mind this was made in the 80’s. It had an overall gritty, gruesome kind of feel, which was really interesting. That being said, sometimes the artwork border lined on an acid trip and I didn’t tend to enjoy those parts as much, though I understood why they were presented that way. I just didn’t completely mesh with the style of artwork.

Dream was a great character to follow along. At first, I kept thinking to myself “Oh god, he’s gonna murder everyone”, but he ended up having a lot more depth to him than previously imagined. It’s not all black and white with the king of dreams, and it was refreshing.

There were other minor perspectives present that were interesting and some that could’ve been left out in my opinion.

The plot … was crazy! I mean, Dream goes to places I never thought he would end up (not going to spoil it for you). I was also delightfully surprised that this tied into the DC universe. Surreal fantasy definitely defines this story, and it was fun. From time to time, the characters would say or do something that didn’t make sense to me, but all in all, 95% of it made sense to me.

In the end, this was an enjoyable journey, and though I don’t think I’ll continue on with the series, I can certainly understand the appeal of this blast from the past.

That’s a Wrap!

Thanks for stopping by, and happy reading!

Have you read this book before? What did you think? Do you have a book recommendation similar to this one? Feel free to share in the comments!

If you’d like to see other reviews of mine, feel free to check out the book review section of my blog or my GoodReads. You can also follow my GoodReads reviews here. There are some great binge-worthy books on there!

Have a great day!

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