Reviews - The Sandman | The StoryGraph

1.39k reviews for:

The Sandman

Neil Gaiman, Dirk Maggs

4.4 AVERAGE

ciddi1004's review against another edition

3.25

mysterious

beini's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

tlfuller13's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

rmunn's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Fantastic cast really brings the story to life, I'm looking forward to starting act two. It was good listening to the chapters that were absent from the tv series, that helped to fill in some gaps.

bluestjuice's review against another edition

4.0

Ah, the first book of 2021! Naturally, it turns out to be one that I largely covered in 2020, but couldn't quite cross the finish line with prior to the striking of the midnight bell.

I am a Sandman fan and this is the Audible Original audio performance of the first 20 issues, narrated by Neil Gaiman and acted by an enormous collection of very talented voice actors. I am not always a fan of an author reading (or narrating) their own work, nor am I exactly a heedless fan of Neil Gaiman altogether, however his personal flavor of speaking is very suited to the narration here, probably because he always does sound just like himself. The casting and performances for the other roles is largely extremely good, with special appreciation for Dream, whom I thought sounded exactly as he ought. Death, despite being beautifully voice acted, didn't quite resonate for me so well, unfortunately. She managed to sound cheerful and serene in the way that I required her too, but also just a touch too flippant, or perhaps not sufficiently caring, to wholly match my imagination. Still, that's a hard role to get perfectly and the actor did a fairly good job on the whole. I also really loved Nada's voice actor and that entire episode was gorgeously done.

This collection includes all of the Preludes and Nocturnes episodes, including the profoundly disturbing 24 Hours, which actually was so upsetting that I paused the audiobook and didn't return to it for a number of weeks before finally gritting my teeth and getting on with it. Audio performance of difficult material is definitely harder for me to get through than illustrated versions, it's clear. I enjoyed some of the later pieces more. I wasn't sure how the series would work sans any kind of graphic component, and I definitely think it helped that I already had mental images of how characters and some scenes ought to look, but the script was carefully written to provide visual cues that otherwise would have been missing, and I definitely think it's worth a try even for someone with no prior background in the Sandman canon. It'd be very interesting to see what their takeaway was.

Altogether I think this was an extremely successful adaptation and despite not being my favorite pieces of the Sandman story, a strong beginning. Hopefully it is successful enough that they can continue producing further installments.