“Fiddle-de-dee’s not English.”

The Sandman Volume 9: The Kindly Ones by Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Marc Hempel, Richard Case, D’Israeli, Teddy Kristiansen, Glyn Dillon, Charles Vess, Dean Ormston and Kevin Nowlan
Vertigo (1996)
352 pages

Despite having another two volumes to the Sandman series after The Kindly Ones, this volume is definitely the climax of the series, where Gaiman attempts (quite successfully, I must say) to tie up the loose ends from all the previous storylines.

Now, when you have eight volumes and numerous subplots with various loose ends to tie, you have a lot of stories and a lot of characters — the thickness of this volume testifies to that — and I was struggling to remember what happened earlier, especially in The Doll’s House and Seasons of Mist. I read those first volumes very long ago, it seems. Rose’s story, especially, has grown really vague to my mind. But I did love the story that one of the old women told her (about a man who promised to marry a woman but didn’t), and the illustrations done for the story.

If there’s one thing about this collection that irritates me, it’s how it tries to make a reference to almost everyone and everything the series had touched before, so it gets a little long-winded at points. And this volume wouldn’t be able to stand alone, and won’t make much sense if read out of order. Start from the beginning and don’t skip volumes (like I did!).

I didn’t quite like the artwork when I first started, but I guess it grew on me.

This book also made me cheer so hard for Matthew the crow. I had always liked him, but here he’s just wonderful.

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The Wake by Neil Gaiman
Illustrated by Michael Zulli, Jon J Muth and Charles Vess
Vertigo (1997)
192 pages

Here is your epilogue, the ending of the series. This was sombre and a little bit slow, as it tries to wrap up whatever’s left to wrap up. We get to see a whole lot of people in the Dreaming this time, characters ordinary and curious, talking about their experiences with Dream and dreams and the Dreaming. This volume also made me love Matthew even more. There are a lot of things covered here — from loyalty to mortality and the choices that some of the characters make, and mourning and loving and moving on.

I have problems remembering what happened before, and that kind of brought down my enjoyment of this volume. (What was the deal Will Shakespeare made with Morpheus? I forget. Also, this probably means I will have to check out The Tempest — thanks to his story here and partly to Dan Simmon’s Ilium.)

The second-to-last story in the volume was the one I liked most. The illustration was done in a style that I really liked, almost like Chinese ink-drawings; befitting to the story being told, I guess.

This is a great end to a wonderful series. I’m always a bit sad when I get to the ending of a series, but then again, the best thing about getting to the end is being able to look back to the beginning and think, Oh, so that was where all that was heading, and think how very well everything was done.