This is where the Sandman series really hits its stride. The Doll's House story line is entertaining, horrifying and amusing at the same time, and the stand-alone 'Men of good Fortune' is a wonderful interlude. The art work remains distinctive with its muted tones and shades. Excellent. ( )

Gaiman grows the universe of the Sandman in the second volume, The Doll's House. Collecting Sandman issues 9-16, Dream resumes picking up his life and kingdom, attempting to recover several of the nightmares who left his kingdom during his absence - Brute, Glob, and the Corinthian. During his searching, Dream discovers another vortex in the dream-world, this one being a young girl named Rose Walker.

Rose is looking for her younger brother, Jed, who she hasn't seen for many years. Jed, however, falls into the hands of the Corinthian, a serial-killer nightmare. The Corinthian is on his way to a serial-killer convention, and this is part of the volume is one of the reasons The Sandman is under the horror genre, as descriptions and depictions of the serial killers and the Corinthian are quite horrific.

Part four (The 13th issue), Men of Good Fortune, is an interesting deviation from the other chapters, as Dream meets a man in a tavern in the 14th century who tells his friends he won't ever die because he thinks everyone else does it to fit in with the norm. Dream then offers the man a meeting, 100 years from that night, at the same bar. This continues for many meetings, each a century apart, and shows an interesting transition and growth in the man - and growth in the Sandman at the end. ( )

I've limited these novels to three stars for the dark content within, but I do enjoy much of the storyline. Very imaginative images and topics, and the homage to G.K. Chesterton was sweet. I like the way Gaiman plays with ideas and his characters are compelling, at least the ones which aren't repulsive are compelling. ( )

Though Gaiman had already made his mark with Black Orchid, Sandman is where he really begins to fall into his style, which sometimes becomes his downfall in its predictability.

Here, he plays for perhaps the first time at mixing mythology, spirituality, and strange real events into a story beyond the ken of other fairytale rewrites and new age mysticism. There is a sense here that the characters and story are still undeveloped in his mind, which provides the reader with some welcome ambiguity, as soon he will nail down the characters into something a bit too precise and not quite realistic enough.

Of course, this merely becomes his frame around which he tells stories from any place or era which more than make up for the lack of conflict in other parts. The final story in this collection is an exploration of the depths of human desire and control, which recalls to us the depravity of The Lord Of The Flies. It should be unsurprising to us that Sandman became a classic by shocking and questioning its readers, and it must sadden us that no more comics have won the World Fantasy Award since. ( )

This is the best volume to start the series with. Except for the brilliant "The Sound of Her Wings," the first volume is rather lackluster and might fool people into thinking this series is something it's not.

The Doll's House, though, is a great, fairly self-contained introduction to many of our main players in Sandman. It's creepy, surreal, fantastic, romantic, and thought-provoking. While you can read this volume without the first, you shouldn't move forward until you've read this. ( )