http://books.moonsoar.com/archives/20... ( )

Two of the greatest strengths of the Sandman books are on display here. Firstly the way that Neil Gaiman takes an archtypal story arc (the quest to save a princess from an evil ussurper) and makes it so completely new, fresh and uncanny. One really doesn't know what to expect and is constantly surprised by the way the story unfolds. Secondly, the vividness of the characters, particularly the secondary characters. They immediately take on a life of their own and stick in ones mind. Overall, this isn't the best of the Sandman books, but its still a great read and yet more proof of why the Sandman is such an outstanding series. ( )

A Game of You brings back many characters we've seen before which I always find pleasant and familiar. Like you're on solid ground because you've seen these people before and you know a little bit about them. Unlike all the books leading up to GY, there is absolutely no deviation from the main story line and the effect is amazing and absolutely perfect for these particular stories.

GY is well written, and humorous, however at the same time, GY is dark and ends with the death of the only character who I really wanted to live. Putting that aside, however, many of the other Sandman stories are much darker and GY is able to intertwine respect and humor.

One aspect of Neil Gaiman's writing that I'd forgotten up to this point is that he does include minority groups. Particularly, he includes queers and those of racial and ethnic diversity. This is especially satisfying because Gaiman is (to the best of my knowledge) a straight, white, male of mainstream society, and normally the only times when minorities will be featured in books/movies, etc, is when a minority themselves is doing the writing. Hence, it feels good to get a sense of acknowledgement from such major adolescent literature.

Four and a half stars. ( )

Not one of my favourite volumes, if only because it's a little uneven. I really adore certain aspects, but in places this volume seemed to wander. Still worth the read, though -- it sets up some characters for later importance. ( )

A Game of You, the fifth volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe is an arc about a girl named Barbie - who made a brief cameo with her husband Ken in A Doll's House - and her current state of dreaming.

Unlike most of the other volumes, Morpheus does not play much of a role in this work. He shows up at the very beginning and the end, to take care of business in Barbie's dreamworld. The story also touches dramatically on identity, as many of the characters are struggling with it in their lives.

A Game of You is a thought provoking addition to the Sandman series and remains dark - and sad - even though it deviates from the horror that is characteristic of some of the earlier volumes. ( )

SPOILERS AHEAD!!! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

I wrote myself a note last night to remind myself that the introduction to A Game of You really irritated me. I wish I had not. Though Samuel R. Delany did initially irritate me because he writes in his introduction to move on and finish the story before reading his thoughts (why on earth don't you put it at the end then!), when I did get back to his thoughts this morning, I found them to be really on point and fabulously written. Once again I find a short but extremely poignant bit of fantasy criticism at the beginning of a graphic novel! Delany writes, "the key to this particular fantasy world is precisely that it is a fantasy world where the natural forces, stated and unstated, whether of myth or of chance, enforce the dominant ideology." It seems like he is truly disparaging Gaiman's work until he says, "And it remains just a nasty fantasy unless, in our reading of it, we can find some irony, something that subverts it, something that resists that fantasy," and this is precisely what we find. Irony is definitely the dominant characteristic of A Game of You.

I was most struck by the idea that Barbie (yes, Barbie formerly married to Ken--yuck!) is our protagonist. I am one of those short, plump, annoying moms who really doesn't want her daughters to play with Barbie because she represents unnatural and unhealthy standards for beauty. They say that if she were alive, she would be seven feet tall with a whopping thirty-eight inch bust (haha---smaller than mine), but it towers over an eighteen inch waist (definitely smaller than mine). A "perfectly proportioned female" would have ten inches difference between bust, waist, and hips (34, 24, 34) supposedly. Barbie, on the other hand, would not be able to stand or walk; she'd fall over at the waist, weighed down not by her expansive intellect, but her crazy long blond hair. Obviously, she is an ideal role model for young children. But, for Gaiman, Barbie is actually only consistent with her childhood toy theme on the surface. The first panel in which she appears shows her half naked in bed, but we learn that she has an interesting group of friends. She is the sweet Barbie the doll makers want her to be, but she is also best friends with a transsexual, strangely insecure about her face (she's always drawing on it), and she is obviously repressed in many ways.

It's hard for me to write a sentence summary of what this story was really about because I'm not sure exactly what happened. Barbie's dreamworld was in trouble from the Cuckoo, but this trouble had something to do with Barbie and Rose Walker (see A Doll's House). I was initially frustrated that Barbie was the princess of her realm (don't we get enough of Barbie's awesomeness in the pink aisle of Toys R Us?) but it wore off as the subtle hints showed how powerless and ridiculous she was in that function. Her realm is icy cold, and she has nothing on but a ball gown. She is also at the mercy of her friends/subjects because she has no idea where she is going. After losing, or being betrayed by, all her friends, she is eventually taken to the Cuckoo who turns out to be.........I don't know. I still don't know and I finished the book. There were some really cool parts of this confrontation though. As Barbie approaches the Cuckoo's Citadel, she realizes that it's her old house in Florida. I have to admit that I was really afraid to find out who the Cuckoo was at this point; I have this idea for a book of my own. But I need not have worried, the Lacanian/Freudian psychoanalysis was really quite straight forward. At least in appearance alone, the Cuckoo was Barbie's younger self. I could go on about her public self versus her private self, but I am more interested in the type of analysis Delany did in his introduction than the individual psychoses of a character based off of a plastic goddess. There was some part of her that she repressed and that part took over her dreamworld. But, that's not all there is to it. The Cuckoo was also something outside of Barbie, something like an actual cuckoo...a possessing force or something. When Dream shows up at the end, he speaks of her "kind," but no one ever really says what her "kind" was. The same is true for Thessaly, who is apparently some sort of witch but we never find out which coven or clan she belonged to or anything.

I could spend a great deal of time talking about Wanda, Hazel, Foxglove, and Thessaly too, but I really wanted to mention how interesting Dream's reaction to the whole ordeal is at the end. I think there is something very attractive about Dream. He acts like a god. I know that sounds weird because we really don't have many references for what a god acts like except what we get from mythology and religion and he really doesn't act like any of those gods. He has his own sense of morality and it's so logical that it is hard to resist. Barbie wants him to punish the Cuckoo, but he seems to feel sorry for her. Dream offers her one "boon," but she obviously has to get herself and her friends home, so she can't recreate her dreamworld or anything. I need to think more about how to explain this, but Dream is just so calm and detached. I don't understand why what the Cuckoo has done is not evil, but what Thessaly, Hazel, and Foxglove have done is evil, and yet, I feel like if I asked Dream, he could explain it. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some religious fantasy. I don't feel safe because the world is in Dream's hands or anything. I just think he's cool and godlike. I like Death for a lot of the same reasons, but Death is really nice. I always look forward to her showing up because she's sweet to the other characters. You never really know if Dream is going to be nice or not. He wasn't very sympathetic to Barbie, but he doesn't lose his temper, and he's not mean really. I'm not doing a good job of this. The point is I think Dream is kinda attractive as an Endless...thingy. :)

Best part of this book was the sheer femininity of the whole thing. I really enjoyed one of the last scenes where Barbie tells Wanda what it was like to go into a comic book store. I've only ever been into a comic book store once, and the people there were super nice! But, I thought it was cute that the guys weren't nice to Barbie at all. They made fun of her breasts, and she said they must have taken "unhelpfulness lessons." It makes me wonder if I just got lucky. I would have been more nervous the first time, but I had my kids with me. Luckily though, if I need to go into a comic book store, I can take someone with me to show me the ropes. The really funny part was when Barbie told Wanda she wished she was there because Wanda would have said something to the guys. I have mixed feelings about this. It seems like it would be nice to have someone stick up for you when guys pick on you, but on the other hand, is it really worth it? What was hurt? Her pride. Besides, the guys in the comic book store probably wanted her. Immature way of showing though.

For a guy, Gaiman really does capture women pretty well. Barbie is fairly complex, as are Hazel and Foxglove. Thessaly is cool (weird and scary, but cool), but I don't think she's really human, so I don't think she counts. Gaiman seems like he would be a really cool person to talk to. Perhaps. ( )

A "skerry" is "a rugged, insulated sea-rock or stretch of rocks, covered by the sea at high water or in stormy weather; a reef."
The world of Dream is enormous and scattered with countless skerries, each one a setting for a thousand dreams. Morpheus is alerted that "One of the skerries is dying ..." His companion crow, Matthew, asks, "So what are you going to do about it, Boss?"
The Sandman responds, "Do about it? The Skerries are distant islets in the shoals of dream. They live, they die. They come and go. Why should I do anything about it?"
Here is a story for all the grown-up little girls who once played with Barbies. Meet a dream-world Barbie on a dying Skerry, accompanied by her gender-confused guardians. According to an oracle speaking from the face of a dead man, the Moon does not acknowledge cultural choices about gender. "Gender isn't something you can pick and choose as far as Gods are concerned."

This is another fine novel from this author. It shows the complexity possible in a graphic novel. The intertwining of fantasy and reality. Not so subtle digs at contemporary culture (Barbie and Ken). As you read it you quickly realize that you can't tell which narration is "real". ( )

Barbie, a fairly minor character from The Doll's House, takes centre stage as her dream world comes back to haunt her.

Many people dislike this volume. I can see where they're coming from; Gaiman isn't dealing with the most palatable of themes here, and I'm sure that fantasy/horror readers are particularly likely to find the resolution distasteful.

Personally, however, I feel that this is one of the stronger volumes in the series. Characterization isn't always Gaiman's strong point, but he's done some wonderful things here. I found it very easy to feel for these people. Barbie, unable to dream since her encounter with the dream vortex; Hazel, seemingly tough but so unworldly that she knows next to nothing about pregnancy; Foxglove, haunted by an old lover with whom the reader is already acquainted. The story comes alive through them, and for the first time we begin to get a feel for how tightly all the mortals who wander into Dream's world are connected.

Most of all, though, I love Wanda. I recall reading that the creative team received hate mail when she debuted in the first issue of this story arc. Readers were deeply offended that Gaiman would include a transsexual character. But by the time A Game of You had wound to a close, those same readers were writing in to say how much they loved her. While Gaiman does deal with some issues surrounding her transsexuality, he treats Wanda as a person above all else. She's just a normal girl who happens to have been born in a man's body.

So I love this one. I, like many others, can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the theme, but I love the execution. And I don't think Gaiman treats the resolution as either a negative or a loss. It's simply a shift, a change in Barbie's world.

Highly recommended. This one is very stand-alone, too, so you don't have to have read the rest of the series in order to enjoy it. I do recommend, however, that you pair it with Death: The Time of Your Life. It features Hazel and Foxglove, and it deals with many similar ideas. ( )

Hmm. I am divided on this one. I didn't like it as much as I did Season of Mists, for all that this is in many ways a more intelligent and incisive book. It's dark and it's often gruesome (Hazel's dream about her baby attacking Foxglove's was possibly one of the more disturbing things I've ever seen), and the dual storyline meant that the reader is often left questioning which one is reality and which fantasy, if such a concept can ever be attached to a work by Gaiman at all. Wanda was fabulous, though, and I loved the way Gaiman dealt with ideas of gender and sexuality and so on.

However, I was a little confused by the idea of the Cuckoo - was she a part of Barbie who had been repressed, and who was trying to come back to the surface? Was she a completely different entity? A part of Barbie who had been sent into the Dreaming and then changed? - and I really, really didn't believe Hazel's 'don't you have to kill a rabbit when you're performing a pregnancy test?' statement. Let alone the 'but you can't get pregnant if you have sex standing up!' *rolls eyes*

A recommendation, then, but a somewhat confused one. ('Which is unusual how?', she says...) ( )

So this book gets mixed reviews, obviously. I'm a Sandman nut, and I really enjoyed it. Yes, it doesn't jive with most of the traditional volumes - but it's also just as important to the storyline as any of the other books. So if you want to get the full impact of the Sandman storyline, read this book! It's considerably dark, like a fair amount of Sandman, and has some of that fun horror of the earlier volumes mixed in. Also, if you want to enjoy and understand the characters that show up in the Death spin offs, you gotta read A Game of You. I think it's an often misunderstood book - give it a chance. ( )

Link to a review on my personal website (might be in Swedish). ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/26300.html... ( )

Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is one of the finest examples of storytelling I've ever seen, graphic or otherwise. The collection A Game of You is about identity and about what happens to the worlds we create as children. ( )

one of my favorites among favorites.. i love the idea of your childhood dreams coming to life in the "real" world. read it. ( )

Cool ideas, kinda slow after fourth chapter. Dark, funny. ( )

A New York girl and her friends are threatened by a being called the Cuckoo that has invaded her dream world. It is not quite what I was expecting since it is really a fantasy story with a cameo by Morpheus rather than an actual story about the Endless. It was an involving story though. ( )

the sandman series only gets better the more you read. ( )

A messed up girl named Barbie has created a dream world with some serious problems. After blocking this out of a mind for her time, and not dreaming, eventually her dream world gets to her.

This drags in her friends and neighbours, who happen to include an immortal witch, and an agent of her dream foe.

Through a drawing down the moon ritual, the women involved enter the dream world to try and rectify things and find Barbie.

Needless to say, Morpheus is not at all amused, when he finally has to act.

This part really has little to do with the Endless.

http://graphicsf.blogspot.com/2006/11... ( )

While this story arc is linked to the rest of the series, it is also one of the most self-contained of the story arcs and stands alone very well. Barbie, who was a marginal character in A Doll's House, has separated from her husband and is living in a small New York apartment building with a cast of rather odd characters. There's Wanda, a transwoman who is Barbie's best friend and protector; Hazel (who might be pregnant) and Foxglove, the punk lesbian couple; Thessaly, a bespectacled witch; and George, the recluse who lives on the top floor. When Barbie is drawn back into the dream world she visited every night as a child, the other women must figure out how to protect her and bring her home. Meanwhile, Barbie is on a quest to save the kingdom from a mysterious adversary known as The Cuckoo.

This has always been one of my favorites, because I love the interaction between all the characters. Hazel and Foxglove are particularly great, and I kind of wish Gaiman had seen fit to give them a starring role later on. Ah well... ( )