I know how the dialogue is stylized is supposed to be in line with the characters' personalities but this form of characterization made the dialogue difficult to read to the point 3/4ths of the way through, I just stopped reading it cause it was putting too much strain on my eyes.

Otherwise greatly enjoyed what parts of the story I was able to pick up. Liked the parts that Despair, Delirium, & Death's trio more than I did Dream's. ( )

If you really, really like Neil Gaiman's "Sandman", then you might want to give this a look.

If you don't, this is really not worth your time.

For really big fans, we revisit the story of when Dream went to Hell and received ownership of the place from Lucifer, only this time we get to see it from Death's perspective, with Despair and Delerium in tow. This is a chance to see the story from a different artistic/narrative perspective. It fills in how Death dealt with the fallout from it all. It's interesting.

For fans who get angry when people screw with the source material, do not read this. It will annoy you. There's a sort of profile thing at the beginning of the novel that tells you about the Endless, mimicking the beginning of the Hell arc in the "Sandman" comics, except the writers used basically what you should already know, did it poorly, and just told you uninteresting information. Delirium is a really bad shoujo extra and Despair is... probably the best character in the story. Dream is a really stupid mock bishounen.

For people who haven't read the series: DO NOT START HERE. In fact, do NOT pick this up. I've read bad manga before, and this takes the cake. The story is awful. The art makes cheap shoujo look good. The manga conventions used are so terribly warped and ridiculous that you cannot even laugh at any of it.

So, in all honesty, it's an interesting add-on if you want more "Sandman" and you'll take whatever they throw at you. If that's not you... go read something else. ( )

fake manga, but fun to read nonetheless. ( )

Why did this have to be done? Jill Thompson could have made perfectly fine goofy big-eyed imitation-manga about whatever, and the parts of this that she wrote from scratch are pretty good for morbid children (I like the slapstick bit about gruesome things happening to a ghost who never complains). But trying to remake Neil Gaiman's [b: Season of Mists|25101|Season of Mists (The Sandman, #4)|Neil Gaiman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327937313l/25101._SY75_.jpg|25854] from another character's point of view, and dropping in huge chunks of the original dialogue, doesn't work at all. Not only is it a very weird style contrast, it literally makes no sense a lot of the time because of the way Thompson rushes through it to get to the jokes, and also because in the original book Gaiman was counting on people having already read the previous books. His prose was already a little clunky and flowery sometimes, but Thompson makes it worse by treating it like Shakespeare - in the kind of lousy Shakespeare production where they don't know how to make the meaning clear through action, but they have to say all the words, so you get some goofy stage business over a soundtrack of classy-sounding gibberish. Sure I'm a snob, but I just don't get how this is supposed to be more fun for a kid than something that isn't a cutesified adaptation. I keep meaning to check out Thompson's [b: Scary Godmother|8573653|Scary Godmother Omnibus|Jill Thompson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1550881524l/8573653._SX50_.jpg|15314496], which looks much cooler than this. ( )

Not bad. Delirium is adorable! :D ( )