juushika 's review for:

The Sandman Vol. 7: Brief Lives by Neil Gaiman

3.0

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Dream and Delirium search for long-absent Destruction. This is a melancholy, introspective interlude that explores the Endless themselves; it's also a roadtrip that visits some reoccurring characters. All elements I appreciate, so I should like it--but this series just hasn't made me invested enough to recall the context for minor characters, and Delirium is a missed opportunity when it comes to exploring the Endless. Her gimmicks in character design and dialog styling are fantastic, but she fails to feel truly, well, delirious--she's indistinct and shallow, too cogent, weird like a magic pixie dream girl rather than weird like a god of weirdness. This series still has yet to click for me, and the halfhearted strangeness of Delirium is part of why: The Endless need to be more distinctive, more strange, and larger than human; without that, the core of this series is hollow.