Endless Nights (The Sandman, Book 11)

Like the rest of Gaimans "Sandman" series, "Endless Nights" tells stories about beings of great power, which represent universal themes and truths. In addition to the Endless, the seven great beings embodying essential aspects of all living things (Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Delirium, and Desire), in "Endless Nights" we also find references to cosmic topics like the origins and personalities of the stars and planets, powerful stories in the tradition of the best folktales, and intensely personal stories of modern people.

The illustrations of this book are top-notch, truly some fantasy-pairings of visual stylists with Gaimans unique style. Each story has a different illustrator, and while all are good, a few stand out. Milo Manaras vision of Desire is surely the best I have ever seen, Barron Storeys "15 Portraits of Despair" demands that each page be examined closely, Bill Sienkiewiczs take on Delirium is so perfect that one wonders why it wasnt done before, and Frank Quitelys short tale of Destiny is the perfect end to the book.

The only thing going against the book, I would say, is that its billed as a "Sandman" graphic novel, but it really is not one. Its stories, while intriguing, do not fit in effectively with the rest of the Sandman stories. Rather, they are stand-alone stories about the Endless, which means that theyre good stories, but theyre not an integral part of the larger work of the "Sandman" series. It has been almost ten years since the end of the original "Sandman" series, and it shows. The only other time since then that Gaiman has revisited these characters was in the excellent "The Dream Hunters," which was more of an integral part of the "Sandman" story than "Endless Nights" is.