07. Absolute Sandman Vol 4/5, by Neil Gaiman.

Absolute Sandman 4 contains issues #57-75. It is dominated by The Kindly Ones, and The Wake. The book as a whole is very focused on Dream, and you can see the mechanisms turning from the first few chapters, once you know what to look for, drawing the book to a very interesting showdown. Spoilers ahead, so proceed at own risk.

What I liked most about this book was that it was the story of a Dream, but not necessarily the Dream. It really is a story about stories, and it makes sense that Dream is most closely followed throughout the series, because Dreams are, in effect, stories that parts of our brains tell to other parts of our brains.

I also really enjoyed that the end of the book and the end of the series evoked very similar emotions, and they amped each other up really well. The end of the series was regretful but optimistic, in a way, and it definitely made you look forward to a new story that, while it wouldn't be Sandman, might be as evocative as Sandman. Different stories not being worse than each other has come across as sort of a theme that I've picked up from Neil Gaiman's vast array of characters, too. There are many different types of character, and many different stories within the framework of Sandman, and it's never implied that any of them are, at their essence, any more desirable or worthy than any other. Which I like.  

People who know me will no doubt already know of my dislike for endless character-saving deux ex machina, and my liking to see that major characters aren't safe just by virtue of their necessity to the story. So I very much enjoyed the ending. It made me very sad, being that Dream is nearly my favourite character, but I enjoyed the thought that it was just one aspect of the essential concept of Dream that died, and not the idea itself. And I enjoyed seeing them farewell him in such a fitting manner. I haven't started the fifth volume of Sandman yet, but it will be very interesting to see what it adds to the main body of the series.

06. Absolute Sandman Vol 3/5, by Neil Gaiman.

Absolute Sandman 3/5 covers issues #40-56, which is Brief Lives, Ramadan, and a collection of stories set in the tavern at the end of the world. Brief Lives follows Delirium's plan to find her brother Destruction, and convince him to resume his caretaking of his role as a member of the Endless. She asks her siblings for assistance in turn, and eventually finds an ally in Dream. Brief Lives really fleshes out a lot of the Endless, and you see a lot more of how their inter-sibling dynamics works. It's really interesting to see, and it made all of the Endless rather closer to one another in the end. Certainly, it makes it harder for me to definitively say 'This one is my favourite' and have it be true all of the time. Additionally, it was really interesting seeing how the different aspects have different personalities that fit with their core areas of control. Dream is aloof and not quite real; he seems insubstantial and as though he could decide to end encounters at any moment. Death has a reverence for life that makes her treat everyone with respect and kindness. Desire is, in itself, fueled by the desire for more, more, more. Destiny is implacable and controlled, and believes in the rigidity of structure. Delirium is constantly flitting from one thought to another - everything she does follows a plan, but it's a loosely structured plan that will change in an instant if she needs it to. She can, and does, pull herself together if she needs to, but her concentration prefers to be split into many fragments analysing many different things, rather than focused all on one. Despair, like Desire, emulates her aspect. She despairs of despairing, but it is in her nature. Destruction is very interesting, what with the whole leaving-the-Endless thing. He cares so much about the limits of destruction that he was unable to face being the cause of too much destruction, which humans seem to be adept at. Instead he abdicates, and allows destruction to control itself while he wanders the world. Potentially my favourite story arc in Sandman so far.

The tavern at the end of the world business is also really, really well done. I enjoyed seeing how a lot of very different characters were brought together for a bunch of short stories that all revolved around a common theme. It was done really well, and Gaiman's characterisation is as always impeccable. There's something to relate to about everybody, and everyone feels thoroughly fleshed out - and for relatively minor characters who only really stand out for a brief time, that makes a big difference to the feel of the whole story. It feels like everyone's life is worth looking at - not just the Endless, but run of the mill people, too. It allows him to touch on things he would have difficulty working into bigger stories, and give them the attention they deserve.

All in all, the whole book has been a big hit with me. I'm currently almost at the end of Sandman 4 (been a bit lazy getting this up) and I'll be really sad when it finally comes to the point where I've read all the stories. Of course, then it'll be time to start at the beginning again, but it'll be sad to be 'done'.

05. American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis.

American Psycho was recommended to me by a few people, so it got bumped up the list a bit. Also it's one of those classic books-everyone-should-get-around-to-reading-at-some-point, so I felt like I really should give it a go at some point. It follows Patrick Bateman, a rich businessman who spends most of his time doing anything but work, and has a nasty habit of murdering people on a whim. Half of the point of the book is that it wants you to look at society in a different manner to the usual, given how people just gloss over how bizarre things are in order to keep up with the Joneses. Outfits and meals are listed in meticulous detail (lest we fall behind the trends), and Bateman flies into pieces over his difficulties attaining reservations at the coveted Dorsia. Juxtaposed with the rape/murder/torture that he gets away with on what seems like more or less a weekly basis, and his flat-out confessions to multiple people (on tape, even) that are laughed off as a joke, because, he couldn't possibly be a serial killer (not Bateman, he knows what to wear with argyle socks, we have lunch with him, he's just a yuppie).

And granted, it does a very good job of doing so. The ending keys in with that, the fact that his nosedive into insanity isn't picked up by anyone, the careful, detailed, brand referencing, his anger when others don't follow the trends as closely as he does, all keys into what a caricature society can be. Technically, and in its execution, this is a marvellous book. I can't say you should not read it, because you should. It shows you a different part of society that most people don't think to look at, and I think that's a valuable experience for people.

However. I did not enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, even though I can appreciate how well it was fulfilling its function. I was really hoping for a book that left my skin crawling, that had me spooked at the end of a few hours of midnight I-Must-Finish-This-Book-Now reading, and it did not fulfil that role. The portrayal of power-hungry society bored me. Real-life power hungry society bores me as well, so I can't say I was particularly surprised, but I found the products and brands and the constant effort to record those things to be tedious and grating after a while. I didn't care what suit anyone was wearing. I didn't care that they ate this specific thing, or about what precise order his showering routine was. I can see that it helped make a point, but I got that point fairly early on, and it felt very yes-yes-I-know after a while. I didn't have any sort of affinity with that lifestyle. And because I didn't relate to the violence either, I had no real, personal, connection to the book. Which meant that I didn't like it very much in the end, technically competent though it may be.

04. Prey, by Michael Crichton.

Prey details what happens when a bunch of unscrupulous scientists accidentally-on-purpose create robotic nanobots that act as a swarm, are able to replicate, and learn from their experiences. Then everything starts going pearshaped when they discover that at least one swarm, and much of the precursor materials, have been vented outside the laboratory. They call in further experts to help reprogram or dissolve the swarm, with mixed results.

I was very hopeful when I read this book. Nanobots, I thought, are sure to be interesting - especially ones that are essentially a new form of consciousness. However, the first hundred or so pages - a good quarter of the book - seem to be mostly the main character moping about how his wife is acting different, and his suspicions about her having an affair. While a lot of this creates backstory for things that happen later, it was laid on quite thick, and got rather boring. I'm not sure if the wife was intentionally two-dimensional, given later developments, but I spent a good deal of the first part of the book being bored by the domestic troubles - something that continued later on, when there were seemingly random calls from people back home about trivial events that served no noticeable purpose within the rest of the story.

The nanobots themselves are quite cool. I liked how they were done for the most part, and my only real complaint about them is that we don't get enough nanobot action. A lot of the book is drama with coworkers or family, and the nanobots - the reason I was reading this book in the first place - seem to be distinctly second fiddle. That was somewhat frustrating, as I was expecting there to be much more action than there actually was, and there was a lot that they could have explored more thoroughly within the nanobot fight scenes, as it were, to flesh them out more thoroughly.

Overall, I was expecting the focus of this book to be substantially different to what it actually was, so I was a little disappointed with it as a whole. I also thought that the ending was annoyingly ambiguous, and left a lot of loose ends that never get cleaned up. But if drama-filled action-ish novels are more your thing, then  give it a whirl and make your own judgement call.

03. Benny and Babe, by Eoin Colfer.

Benny And Babe is another book that was recommended to me by a flatmate. We did a big book-pile swap of things we each thought the other should read, and I've been slotting them in where I have time. It's about a young boy, Bernard (Benny), who is out in the country with his family, visiting his grandfather, when he runs afoul of local tomboy Babe. After a few initial scraps, they come to the conclusion that they could do pretty well together in Babe's scheme of selling washed-up baits back to tourists for spending money. Unfortunately, the duo is challenged by another local for their bait-collecting rights, leading to various comedic mishaps.

Quite a feel-good adventure with a fairly standard plotline. I enjoyed reading it because it reminded me a lot of several of my old kids-adventure style books, but it was one that I hadn't read before - whereas a lot of my own ones have been read and reread multiple times. It was also a nice change to read something non-fantasy. As much as I love my bizarre worlds and extreme changes, it's nice to switch it up a little sometimes, and read something based closer to home.

02: Absolute Sandman vol 2/5, by Neil Gaiman.

Absolute Sandman Volume Two contains issues 21-39, and tells a couple of major stories with a few minor story arcs thrown in between. Season of Mists recounts the story of what happens when Lucifer quits his job as Master of Hell and gives the key to the realm away to Dream, who is then beset by envoys from many different realms, all seeking audience to cajole, demand, threaten, or bribe their way to becoming the new keepers of Hell. Dream is unimpressed by their petty manoeuvring, and awards the key as he sees fit, in a move that dismays almost everyone while still following a fairly prescribed 'right thing to do' path. In A Game Of You, Barbie gets unexpectedly sucked back into the dream-world of her childhood, somewhere that got taken away from her by the Cuckoo without her even realizing it. Her friends and neighbours from the real world become increasingly caught up in her events, leading to the introduction of a new (hopefully) repeat character, Thessaly, and a little more knowledge about what Dream's world contains.

I was very impressed with this collection of Sandman. Volume Two has confirmed for me that it is definitely a series that I very much enjoy, and is one that I'm sure I will continue to very much enjoy for some time. It contains a lot of elements that I enjoy, and it is written in a way that I find fascinating. There's fantasy, violence, whimsy, surreality, mystery, horror, and other bits and pieces that are all twined together and threaded through to make the storylines interesting, unique, and enjoyable. It always feels like they run just a little bit out-of-kilter with reality, and that it'd be easy to just...turn that four or five degrees sideways and find yourself in a whole new reality.

I've also found out a few things through these books. Firstly is that I really must make more of an effort to get physical copies of books I really enjoy. It's much more gratifying to read a good story when it's well presented, and the copies I have are hardcover, fake-leather-bound, glossy, and really damn heavy, but it makes it a much more tactile pleasure to read, as well as a mental one. Additionally I just really dislike reading comics on a screen, since they're inevitably portrait styled, and landscape size screens make them difficult to work with. My eventual plan is to have a physical library of my favourite books, and electronic copies of a wider range, and I'm going to start trying to add to that collection now, costly or no. As I get more good books, I'll weed out the ones that I don't read or don't like any more.

Secondly is that I should try to divorce my idea of people from my idea of the value of their recommendations. Several times now, I've had a series or TV show or comic or thing recommended to me by someone I don't care for in some fashion, be that their attitude, or appearance, or a facet of their beliefs,  but I let my distaste for them as a person interfere with my idea of the item they are recommending. Doctor Who was first recommended to me by someone I used to be friends with, and subsequently was not, and so I never tried to watch the series, because I thought it would be boring. Turns out I like it a lot. Same thing with Sandman - someone I used to live with was a huge fan, and said I'd like it, but I ignored the recommendation because deep down, I didn't want to think such a jerk could have good taste. And that was even though I knew that we liked several other similar books! It took recommendations from several other, better, friends, and a bored moment where I flicked through the first issue late at night, for me to take the steps to immerse myself in the comic. I'm sure this has happened to me before (but without the qualifying recommendations from more trusted sources) and as such, I've missed out on books or series or movies or shows that I may have really enjoyed. Problem then comes down to how to balance recommendations from others with the things I stumble across myself, and with the things that I want to rewatch or reread, in order to maximise my output of Good Material. Perhaps I'll come across a way to balance these things eventually. For now, I guess I have to acknowledge that I'm missing out on some good things, whilst trying to keep in mind that the time I spend missing out on some good things is almost always spent on other good things, too.

01: A Confusion of Princes, by Garth Nix.

Khemri is a Prince of the Empire, which is to say, part of a self-absorbed, genetically enhanced, internally squabbling upper class that spend most of their time plotting how to assassinate their fellow Princes without detection from the Imperial Mind. He is directed down a pathway Princes aren't normally aware of, and learns some secrets about how the Empire truly functions.

I quite liked this book, but I think it could have been done better than it was. The Empire is ridiculously top-heavy with Princes, which is never really explained - there's no real reason to keep all of them alive, and the amount of resources needed to cater to so many must be simply enormous.

Following section contains major spoilers, continue at own risk. One thing that frustrated me about the storyline was the whole deal with Atalin. The fact that she and Khemri are full siblings is made into a major plot point, as is the fact that the Empire can't breed for native Psitek ability...yet. Implying that it is genetic, but that they haven't isolated the combinations yet. I know that incest is a rather taboo area, but the Empire is huge, obviously fairly corrupt, and gives the distinct impression that they don't give two cents about the wellbeing of any particular Prince or unaugmented human...but the subject is never even brought up at all? They have two full sibling candidates making up 40% of the total number of candidates, and they don't even consider trying to get kids out of them (or for that matter, out of ANY of the candidates?) If they didn't want to breed themselves a reliable source of Emperors, why even mention it at all? It seems ridiculous that it's just totally passed over, especially since the Empire puts so much effort into finding and raising adequate Princes in the first place, and especially since they already have so much Biotek equipment, so they MUST have a decent handle on genetics. This could have been relatively easily cleared up with a few simple statements about how the Psitek ability doesn't appear to be genetically inherited, but instead it's definitely implied that this is the case, and it's a work-in-progress to figure out what the inheritance factors are. That kind of annoyed me, because it felt like Garth Nix looked at that side of the plot, and just went "Nah, I don't feel like addressing any of those loose ends", when further delving into that part of the plot could have made the story awesome.

Other than that, and the Empire generally seeming to be a stupid system of organisation, the basic storyline was reasonably interesting, although the ending was fairly predictable, and far too make-nice to fit well with the rest of the view of the Empire that we've been presented with for the rest of the book. Granted, it's the start of a new Emperor's reign, and she can presumably exert quite a lot of influence over the Mind, but even granting that, she is a product of her upbringing just as much as any other Prince, none of whom seem to be the forgiving/lenient type at all. They're not raised with any concept of family as something that inspires loyalty within themselves, yet this is used as the basis for Atalin-Emperor's exception. It doesn't make sense, and it feels like a cop out ending. Again, could have been awesome, but the flaws detract from it a little too much.