The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes by Neil Gaiman, and Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm...
Title: The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes.
Author: Neil Gaiman.
Artist: Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III and Dave McKean.
Genre: Fiction, graphic novel, fantasy, occult, mythology.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: January-August, 1989.
Summary: An occultist attempting to capture Death to bargain for eternal life traps her younger brother, Dream, instead. After his seventy-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.
My rating: 8.5/10.
My review:
♥ Have you ever had one of those days when something just seems to be trying to tell you somebody?
There was a smell of magic somewhere, like the blue-sparks smell of ozone at a funfair. I'd just had this nightmare. These things with faces like appendectomy scars were crocheting my intestines into body bags for the blind and dead. I told myself it was only a dream, but it didn't matter. The bastards just kept on knitting.
♥ "Hello, London."
"Hullo John Constantine."
"How are you then, London?"
"All right. Full of people. Raining. You?"
"Aah. Not bad. It's almost lunchtime, so I'm heading into town for the breakfast."
"Good idea, John."
"Thank you, London."
♥ All Bette's stories have happy endings. That's because she knows where to stop. She's realized the real problem with stories - if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.
♥ They weren't just customers. They were raw material. Even the quiet little stranger in the corner seat. He'd been here since she came on shift this morning, nursing coffee after coffee, hardly drinking at all, just watching them cool; away in a dreamworld of his own... She wonders about him. She'll talk to him when things get quieter, draw him out, then tonight, when Marsh has climbed in his truck and head headed back upstate, she'll write a story about him. And in her story, she'll make him happy.
♥ Soundless, we travel. No heads turn to mark our passing. The churning crowd parts as we walk through it, looking everywhere else, but not at us. In the world of the waking, of the living, we move silent as a breath of cool wind. As we pass them, people shiver and look away, mutter to each other. "Feels like someone walking over my grave," I heard one man say. "Like someone just walked over my grave." Violin music echoes down the stairwell, sounding frail and out of place. I recognize the tune, although it is being played very badly. I heard it last in London, two hundred years ago.
♥ I find myself wondering about humanity. Their attitude to my sister's gift is so strange. Why do they fear the sunless lands? It is as natural to die as it is to be born. But they fear her. Dread her. Feebly they attempt to placate her. They do not love her. Many thousands of years ago I heard a song in a dream, a mortal song that celebrated her gift. I still remember it.
"Death is before me today:
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness."