Mike Carey and John Bolton’s God Save the Queen takes place in the universe of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. The story develops plot elements from The Sandman, The Dreaming, and The Books of Magic, focusing on the realms of Faerie. It begins with Linda, a teenager in modern London who finds herself caught in a war between Queen Mab, who returns to usurp Titania, who deposed her in the past. Mab imprisons most of Titania’s allies with the help of the Puck and takes Titania’s husband, Auberon, as her plaything. Linda, meanwhile, begins partying with some people she met in a club, who mix their drugs with her blood for a specific experience. Looking for something new to do, they decide to run the border of our world and Faerie, at which point they learn of Mab’s actions. Linda is injured as the retreat and survives a poison arrow with the help of the Cluracan, who tells her more about her past, changing everything she thought she knew about herself.

The story works particularly well as a companion to The Dreaming and The Books of Magic and even features brief cameos from Lucien and Daniel/Dream. Bolton’s art is stunning, with a photorealistic style that’s just slightly askew, adding a tone of menace to the realm of Faerie and making the dreamlike and phantasmagoric sequences that much more powerful. Carey has extensive experience dabbling in the Sandman mythos, having written extensively for the Lucifer spin-off, the Petrefax miniseries, and Hellblazer. In a nice Easter egg, Bolton depicts a copy of he and Carey’s The Furies as well as Batman/Joker: Switch, with cover art by Bolton, among a stack of books (pg. 8). Overall, this is quite an enjoyable volume that bridges the early Sandman spin-offs and DC/Vertigo’s Sandman Universe titles that began in 2019. ( )

I've read some of Mike Carey's novels, and there are parts that I like about them, but they're never immersive, I can always feel something off in the prose/the treatment of women even when I don't bother to pinpoint exactly what's wrong. This was sort of the same, sad and sweet and funny, but the main character just didn't feel complete. On the other hand, someone gets killed with a spoon.

When I remarked to my wife (who has not read any of The Sandman, but has patiently listened to me gab about it for over two years now) that the faerie elements of The Sandman had never been among my favorite, she said that must be true, for she'd never heard me mention them at all. And it was then that I realized how little I cared for Titania, Auberon, and the rest. Gaiman's original jaunt into this realm (the one with Shakespeare) hadn't done much for me, World Fantasy Award nonwithstanding, and neither had its various reapperances. I like Nualla, but it's her separation from Faerie that keeps her interesting, and if I like Cluracan, it's mostly because of a vague feeling that I ought to like characters like him.

So it turns out that not even Mike Carey and John Bolton, who previously came together for the excellent Sandman spin-off The Furies, can make Faerie very interesting. Though there's some good artwork here, the Faerie politics are a big fat load of "who cares?" I don't care if Titania or Mab rules Faerie, and the climax is a big load of nonsense. There's some okay stuff about a teenage girl acting out, and Bolton's art is good when it's not being exploitative, but for this story to be interesting would have required more than the 96 pages it was given; everything has to be sped through too fast to be interesting. The best part, as in so many Sandman spin-offs, is the brief jaunt into the Dreaming, not the actual story.

Neil Gaiman's The Sandman Spin-Offs: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

I can't be the only person to hum "...her fascist regime" every time I see this book cover, can I?

Mab and Titania are fighting over who gets to be the ruler of the Fairy realm. I had to read it twice to fully understand it, but the art was gorgeous, and it was a story that definitely appealed to me. ( )

A strange mix of British youth/drug culture and Fairies, "God Save The Queen" isn't that bad, but at the same time there where a couple of things that didn't sit well with me. For one I felt it could have been longer as I felt some scenes where rushed and I found it a little distracting when an English character used terms like kindergarten and betty ford clinic, that aren’t normally used here. But otherwise I enjoyed the plot and main characters, John Bolton’s art is phenomenal and it was neat seeing characters from The Sandman and Books Of Magic pop up throughout the tale, I just wish there had been more of a story to read. ( )