Sandman Dream Country

So I reviewed Midsummer Night's Dream a few weeks ago which is one of four stories in volume 3 Dream Country and now I will review th other four.

The first story is about the muse Calliope, the only one of the four stories in this volume that is truly relevant to the larger story. Calliope was captured by an author who uses her for sexual pleasure and a writing career, then transfers ownership to another writer who needs her for the sequel to his first best seller. Calliope's story mirrors the story of Dream in that she is an immortal imprisoned on the whims of mortals. Also, she was a lover of Morpheus when he went by that name and was mother to Orpheus, as well as the daughter of the trinity he called when he needed to find his powers when he was released. Also, the story takes place at the same time as his imprisonment, so when he escapes and finally reaches out to his ex-lover,he is a bit more sympathetic than he would have been before. He tries to negotiate her freedom from the author, buthe insists that he needs her for ideas. Dream decides to screw with the mortal by giving him more ideas than he can work with all at once. As a writer, I found this particular part most interesting as he starts saying ideas for stories each summarized in a single sentence. I couldn't help but think Gaiman used this moment to scrawl out all of the ideas he'd eer had that he just couldn't actually develop. Non-writers may not understand this, bt for every great story that is written, the writer has a few dozen ideas that never got past the first draft. Another interesting thought in the back of my mind is that according to Wikipedia, Dream's assistant lucien has a library that contains all of the books that were imagined but never written, so I'd love to know how many shelves had to be suddenly dedicated to the works that the author in this story came up with under the influence of Dream. Anyway, the mental stress breaks th author an dhe releases the muse, so it did work, but only another writer could possibly fathom what torture it is to go from no ideas, to too many, and then back again.

Dream of a Thousand Cats comes off as a joke for cat lovers, a cat travels the Dreaming to find Dream in feline form and he explains that cats once ruled the world and kept humans as pets, but then humans dreamed of the world we know and when a thousand of them dreamed that dream together, they awoke to find it true, suggesting that if a thousand cas dreamed of the way things were they could change it back. Two cats discuss the preachings of the one and while one believes in the dream, the other skeptically quips that a thousand cats could never be organized to do the same thing at the same time, not even dream. One intersting thing about this story is how the cat finds Dream in the form of a cat, but his voice seems the same and the three gatekeepers remain the same as well, but his castle is now a cave, suggesting that while Dream and his realm have some theme of consistency, it is still subject to the perspective of the beholder.

Finally, the volume closes with another visit with Death, Dream's older yet younger looking sister. This is the first part of the series to not involve the titular character at all, and is only tangentially related by Death dealing with the tragedy of a suicidal immortal. Rainie is a metamorph, transformed by the Egyptian Sun God Ra to fight Apep. An ancient artifact was found to channel divine power to transform humans into beings capable of transforming their bodies into raw elements at will, the downside being that once they transform they can never revert to normal flesh and spend the rest of their lives as a patchwork of raw natural elements. At first she was meant to be a superhero, but when she was no longer needed to save the world, she was stuck as an outcast. The worst part is that the nature of her body means that she can't be killed because she is no longer made of any sort of living tissue and can reform any parts that she loses. During one of her worst moments, Death happens to be upstairs attending to one of Rainie's neighbors and comes down to check on her. Death cannot simply take Rainie, she has to actually die by some other means and then Death can finish her work. To do this she must ask Ra the Sun herself. It works and Rainie is put out of her misery. The story is incredibly deep because it basically advocates suicide, but it also poses an extreme circumstance of a life truly not worth living, one that cannot and will not end until she chooses to take matters into her own hands. Death here is no villain, she's just the end of a mortal's journey, and in fact she is a friend to someone who needs her. The more you think about it the deeper it gets. Or maybe Gaiman just decided to wrap up looses ends with an otherwise forgotten character in his publisher's stable. Either way, this one is brilliant as it is depressing.