The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (9)

Yes, yes. I'm behind. I finished The Kindly Ones this evening, and I still need to write about the last three books. Yikes! Maybe Sunday afternoon I'll have time to catch up.

So, it's Sunday afternoon, and I'm catching up. :) The Kindly Ones was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and I truly believe it will someday be regarded as such by people much more important than myself. Our basic plot: Dream has killed his son, Orpheus, and the Kindly Ones (the Furies) are now at liberty to pursue him because they are "allowed" to avenge blood debts. Hippolyta Hall (mother to Daniel) has her son stolen, and she blames Dream, despite the fact that Dream does not steal her son initially. She is the one who awakens the furies wrath against dream, and it only spirals downward from there. We also discover in this volume that Nuala is in love with Dream, and we see the reappearance of Thessaly as Larissa. She kind of falls in love with Dream too. Dream is one of those tortured souls that attracts women apparently. I wouldn't say I'm in love with him, but I can certainly see the attraction. So Dream dies, but Death spares him being tortured further by the furies. My favorite characters were definitely Matthew (the raven), Rose Walker, and Delirium. In some ways, Dream ceases to be a character in this book, but I'm not sure I could explain why. He just reacts to things rather than actually initiating action himself.

This book was definitely less sad than it might have been without the preparation of the previous two books. Still, the end of a myth is sad no matter what, even if it's a myth we've only known briefly (just this month, in fact). I did keep hoping throughout that Dream wouldn't die. I know that's childish, but I don't think it's fair to expect my readings to be that different than the average person. I'm sad when Romeo and Juliet die too. I keep wishing that they will work it out differently no matter how many times I read the tale.

Okay, so all that being said, I want to mention artwork. This volume was very "cartoony." I'm sure there's a technical word for this style of artwork, but I don't know what it is. The best way I know to describe is that the curves are more emphasized than the lines. It makes everyone seem less sinister and more innocent. There's nothing really hideous here: even the scene where "A makeshift barge made of dead flesh is slowly poled down a river of cold semen" becomes more about the words than the image this way. I normally really like cartoons, and I like that style of artwork. But, it definitely does not do the horror genre as well as some others. For the first time since reading this series (a pitfall of having several different artists), I felt like I was reading an illustrated story rather than a graphic novel. However, this is also the first book I've read in which I've found panels that I would blow up and hang in my bedroom...actually, I might just do that. It could be my next art project :).

I'm thinking about writing a longer blog on the series as a whole. I want to discuss this issue of dying mythologies at length, and it doesn't really fit with the purpose of these individual "reviews," if that's even what they can be called. We'll have to see if I make time to do it.