Typically, I’ll look over previous serial entries before hitting the next review in any given series, to give myself an idea of where I was at the earlier point in the series, and make a decent attempt at a coherent narrative in my own right to match the (let’s hope) coherent narrative that the author provided in the first place. Having finished the 6th Sandman book, Fables and Reflections, it was time to do that. Only, I apparently never got around to reviewing A Game of You. Oops. Clearly, it’s a little late to do a reasonable review now. So, um…. it was pretty good? I guess?

Okay, more seriously, like The Doll’s House, A Game of You was a self-contained storyline, whereas the new volume has turned back to the meat of the Endless mythos. I said before that in the 4th volume the seeds of the remaining storyline were all present. In this one, plants are clearly beginning to sprout. The personalities of the family members outside of Dream and Death are finally starting to be revealed in richer detail, and some family mysteries are solved while others are finally acknowledged.

I liked the construction of it, too. Multiple (at-first-glance-) unrelated tales are linked together by both the family dynamic above and by ongoing reference to months of the year in the stories and in their titles. It doesn’t sound like much here on paper, but the experience of it fun to discover as well as somewhat lyrical in execution. An odd point was the final story, Ramadan. Although it matched the month theme, the rest of the tale didn’t match the feel of the others, to the extent that I’m surprised it ended there, rather than being placed at the beginning. (It’s surprisingly relevant to present day for having been written some 15 years ago, though.)