The Sandman: Endless Nights (11)

I also finished Endless Nights last night. Two graphic novels in one day! I probably need to get a life, or figure how to get paid to read. :)

Endless Nights is a collection of seven short stories with one short story for each of the Endless. I keep using the horror label for these books, but they've gotten less horrific progressively through the series. However, this book needs another label, and I'm not sure I know what it is. It's a very sexual book. I would normally say "graphic" but since they are graphic novels, that term doesn't seem to apply. Anyway, it's adult fiction.

Death is the focus of the first story, "Death and Venice." It's about a young American who meets Death on an island outside of Venice as a child. When he returns to Venice, he meets her again and travels with her to destroy an enclave of celebrating Venetians who have locked out time for over two hundred years. The man ponders the idea that he has been in love with Death since he first saw her as a child, which seems to be a common theme with Death. She's the cutie that every guy falls in love with. Perhaps if that happened more to Desire, she wouldn't be so bitter. I really liked this story. It was mostly cute, and it seemed like a reasonably favorable depiction of the soldier, despite the fact that he is shown sneaking up on and killing an unarmed man at the end. Life is complicated, and I don't think Gaiman shies away from that fact at all.

The second story, "What I've tasted of Desire," is about a young woman who tames the village playboy. However unrealistic it seems, she manages to fall in love with him after a brief encounter, refuse him for long enough that he wants her, and then marry him. It's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, she does not keep him for long. He leaves on tribe business, and the enemies bring back his head and place it on her table. She is really an impressive figure: she ignores the head and manages to serve the enemies for long enough to wait for her village's men to get back and kill them. I will say that I really think Desire's story is a lot cooler than she is. She is really quite mean, and while I know that the Buddha said that desire was the enemy of nirvana, I just don't think she would be that off putting. Just a theory.

"The Heart of a Star" is the third story, and the story of Dream's first love. In it we see Desire's first attempt to hurt her brother for fun, in which she succeeds amazingly well. Dream is naive and adorable, but he doesn't even come close to Delight. Delight is really cute in this piece. The woman, Killalla of the Glow, is really quite charming until you see how fickle she is. She falls in love with her own sun just moments after she finds out that Dream is in love with her. I felt really, really bad for Dream. I think that can only happen so many times before you swear off for good. It seems Dream's immortality would have been spent much more pleasantly if he had come to my conclusion rather than to keep trying.

"Fifteen Portraits of Despair" was not a story. I have a very obnoxiously structuralist definition of story, and it includes a beginning, a middle, and an end. It may have been poetry. Maybe. I really liked portrait #13 though. It was a test. I think I will take it someday and post it here. It would be interesting to see how I respond to despair.

The fifth story featured Delirium and was as unlike the adorable Delirium that we met as Desire's story was unlike her nasty personality. I'm not sure I said that well, but I know what I mean. In this story, a group of "crazy" people are recruited to help Barnabas and Dream reclaim Delirium who has gone inside herself. Matthew helps too. At least one of the "crazy" girls finds sanity in her efforts. I liked the happy ending, and I liked that the new Dream (Daniel) was helping out with his siblings willingly. Barnabas is a cool dog. I'd like a dog like that, but you have to train it and everything. I just don't know about that.

"On the Peninsula" was a story about an archeolgoical dig of the future. Apparently, Delirium did something that made time do something weird. Destruction was told to look after her. I'm not sure if this story took place after Morpheus's death or before, but I guess it's too much to hope that Destruction returns to his family again, even if he did like the new Dream. I will say that there were some weird wordless panels on page 131 that I wouldn't mind having explained to me.

"Endless Nights" is also NOT a story about Destiny. It's perhaps an illustrated expository essay. I did not feel that it was in any way a satisfactory conclusion. I would have prefered Destiny's "story" came first.

I really enjoyed Endless Nights more than I enjoyed the last three books, I think. It has a simplicity of structure that was found in the earlier books but got slightly lost as the plot thickened. Also, this book could be read at any time. It's not necessary to read Dream's saga first.