The most structurally ambitious of the collections, The Kindly Ones is a single storyline written as a Greek tragedy, with Morpheus as its doomed hero and an aspect of the triad of witches, the Erinyes, as the Greek chorus. It pulls together various threads left dangling throughout the series, notably the grudges against Morpheus of several characters: Hippolyta Hall, whose child, Daniel, was claimed by Morpheus; the witches themselves; the Norse god Loki; the witch Thessaly.
An amazing, sublime climax to the Sandman/Morpheus story arc. I love how Gaiman created a Greek tragedy wherein the prophecy made and set in motion in earlier volumes with the death of Morpheus's son, Orpheus, by his own hand (the spilling of family blood as foretold), is finished with terrible retribution by the Erinyes, The Kindly Ones, in this volume. Haunting. The art style is a bit different, with thicker black lines so the effect is more like stained glass; I'm not sure I liked it as much as other styles, but it worked.
No comments:
Post a Comment