Sandman: The Doll's House
The Doll's House is the second mini-arc in Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. At first glance it seems very detached from the Preludes and Nocturnes,
but when you have the whole story, you can start to see how the pieces
are being set up for Morpheus' ultimate choice at the end of The Kindly Ones.
The story mostly follows Rose Walker. She is the granddaughter of Unity Kinkaid, one of the children who suffered from the mysterious sleepy sickness when Morpheus was captured at the beginning of the story. Unity was a dream vortex, a being that can destroy the fabric between dreams and ultimately allow the dream world and reality to mix and become indistinguishable. Because of her sickness (and rape) this characteristic was passed on to Rose.
Rose is in Florida, searching for her brother, Jed. When their parents divorced, each got custody of one of the kids. But now that there father is dead and Unity is giving them money, they're looking to reunite the family. Simultaneous to this, Dream is finishing the restoration of his realm by tracking down a few beings who are still missing.
All of the plots eventually come together at a serial killed convention. The convention is the highlight of volume for me. It makes fun of both America's obsession with serial killers and conventions in general (of course there's a panel on feminism and serial killing).
This volume also has two one-off issues that I like a lot better than the main storyline. The first concerns a woman named Nada who dream fell in love with. She rejected him and he condemned her to Hell for 10,000 years. Because Dream is both proud and rash. The second is about Hob Gadling, possibly Morpheus' only friend. The two of them have been meeting at a pub in London every 100 years since 1389, and the issue chronicles these meetings.
The Doll's House isn't my favorite arc in Sandman. It has some interesting characters and subtly sets up some plot threads. But I'm eager to move on to later volumes.
The story mostly follows Rose Walker. She is the granddaughter of Unity Kinkaid, one of the children who suffered from the mysterious sleepy sickness when Morpheus was captured at the beginning of the story. Unity was a dream vortex, a being that can destroy the fabric between dreams and ultimately allow the dream world and reality to mix and become indistinguishable. Because of her sickness (and rape) this characteristic was passed on to Rose.
Rose is in Florida, searching for her brother, Jed. When their parents divorced, each got custody of one of the kids. But now that there father is dead and Unity is giving them money, they're looking to reunite the family. Simultaneous to this, Dream is finishing the restoration of his realm by tracking down a few beings who are still missing.
All of the plots eventually come together at a serial killed convention. The convention is the highlight of volume for me. It makes fun of both America's obsession with serial killers and conventions in general (of course there's a panel on feminism and serial killing).
This volume also has two one-off issues that I like a lot better than the main storyline. The first concerns a woman named Nada who dream fell in love with. She rejected him and he condemned her to Hell for 10,000 years. Because Dream is both proud and rash. The second is about Hob Gadling, possibly Morpheus' only friend. The two of them have been meeting at a pub in London every 100 years since 1389, and the issue chronicles these meetings.
The Doll's House isn't my favorite arc in Sandman. It has some interesting characters and subtly sets up some plot threads. But I'm eager to move on to later volumes.
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