The Sandman, Volume 5, A Game of You

The Sandman, Volume 5, A Game of You-Neil Gaiman

How I found this book: I just keep buying them, I can’t help myself

Setting: Circa 1993

Main Characters:

Dream/Morpheus: The personification of dreams, and one of the Endless, dream plays a more periphery role in this story than in other Sandman comics, though one can say that since it is all about dreams, it is thus all about him.

Barbie: One of the characters from The Doll’s House, she has separated from her one time husband, Ken, and is in New York, trying to find herself. She has a rich fantasy, dream world, where she is a princess in it, and similar to The Chronicles of Narnia, she must enter into it to make things right.

Wanda: A pre-op transsexual who is Barbie’s best friend and lives in her apartment building.

Thessaly: A powerful witch who suspects that there is something more to Barbie’s dream world than meets the eye. She too lives in the same apartment building.

Hazel: On half of a lesbian couple who live in the building, she has recently discovered she is pregnant after a fling with another cook at the restaurant she works at. She, along with her girlfriend, is pulled into Barbie’s dream world with Thessaly.

Foxglove: She had been the girlfriend of one of the minor characters in Preludes and Nocturnes who died during John Dee’s spree. Now she has changed her name and started a new relationship with Hazel, and is pulled into Barbie’s dream world.

The Cuckoo: A mysterious, evil being who has taken over the magic land of Barbie’s dreams, the being she as the Princess must fight to bring happiness to the land again.

George: One of Barbie’s neighbors in the apartment building, it turns out he is a servant of the Cuckoo. He is killed by Thessaly and then kept alive by her magic to give her the answers as to what all the strange happenings are about.

Plot: Barbie left her husband, Ken, and is in New York, trying to find out who she is now she is no longer half of a strange, yuppy couple. She has befriended Wanda, a transsexual woman who keeps an eye out for her, and has made the aquaintances of Hazel and Foxglove, a lesbian couple, and Thessaly, a strange, young woman in the apartment. One night, as a strange hurricane is approaching New York, Barbie begins to dream of the strange, fantasy land that she had often visited in her dreams as a child. There, she is a Princess, who must return to save her magical people from the evil Cuckoo who rules the land. However, Barbie’s dreams begin to have very real effects on the waking world, and Thessaly, who turns out to be a witch, along with Hazel and Foxglove go into the Dreaming to save Barbie, while Wanda remains in the waking world to keep an eye on her sleeping friend.

Themes:

Coming to terms with who and what you are: Many of the characters, especially Barbie and Wanda, are struggling with the idea of identity and just ‘who’ they are. This struggle seems to be personified with Barbie in her dreams, in the real world she is a struggling, confused divorcee, while in her dreams she is a heroic princess out to save her land. At some point she has to wake from her dreams and realize that she is herself, Barbie, whose life has been difficult, but which is still her life, and she should not be ashamed of who she is and try to be something different.

Something wicked this way comes: You can tell already that Gaiman is building up to something in the story. There seem to be subtle hints of things to come in future stories, especially involving Dream. He’s made no friends with Thessaly, and she seems to be one of a long list of people who all seem to want to kick Dream’s ass.

The allure of the fantasy: Dreams can be great and powerful things, but in this series, and in this book as well we see how dreams can be destructive as well. Barbie’s inability to cope with who she is and what her life has become draws her back into a dream world that was a safe haven for her as a child, but which has turned out to be a land that is as equally treacherous, if not more so, than the real life. It is up to her to let go of those dreams, to put them aside and let them fade away, so that she can go on living.

Every book sucks somewhere: I think that it was rather sucky that the main character of the series, Dream, didn’t have a bigger part to play in this book. I spent much of it waiting for him to appear somewhere, and it isn’t till the last big that we see him arriving in all his dark glory to tell us exactly what is going on. I suppose it is nice to not have Dream be as much of a focus in this one, but it did leave me hanging for a bit.

What did I like: I loved Wanda. I wish there were more Wanda’s in the world, and I don’t care if they are male, female, or still deciding what they are, Wanda was a wonderful person.

How would I rate this wormy book: Like many of the other Sandman graphic novels, I would rate this as a FAT WORM. It’s fun if you really are into the series, and it continues with many of the themes that Gaiman has developed for the world of Dream.