Leser-Rezensionen

• roguebelle

  (5/5)

  Not one of my favourite volumes, if only because it's a little uneven. I really adore certain aspects, but in places this volume seemed to wander. Still worth the read, though -- it sets up some characters for later importance.
• iftyzaidi

  (4/5)

  Two of the greatest strengths of the Sandman books are on display here. Firstly the way that Neil Gaiman takes an archtypal story arc (the quest to save a princess from an evil ussurper) and makes it so completely new, fresh and uncanny. One really doesn't know what to expect and is constantly surprised by the way the story unfolds. Secondly, the vividness of the characters, particularly the secondary characters. They immediately take on a life of their own and stick in ones mind. Overall, this isn't the best of the Sandman books, but its still a great read and yet more proof of why the Sandman is such an outstanding series.
• mrslee_1

  (2/5)

  An explanation of the two stars: this is not to do with the quality of writing or drawing, but for my taste and the content of the book. It was simply a much darker tale than I enjoy delving into, and I never would have bothered to finish it if Gaiman was not an excellent story teller. The stars in my reviews reflect my feelings on finishing a work, not just the quality of the work. I felt pretty bad when this was done.
• theboylatham_1

  (2/5)

  Seven out of ten. CBR format.

  Barbie, a New York divorcée (introduced in The Doll's House), travels to the magical realm that she once inhabited in her dreams, only to find that it is being threatened by the forces of the Cuckoo. This series introduces the character of Thessaly, who will play a key role in Morpheus' eventual fate.
• krau0098

  (5/5)

  I love the Sandman series so far and this book was no exception. Gaiman has a way of telling dark stories that are very creative and really expand your mind and make you think.Barbie's best friends are a drag queen named Wanda and two lesbians that live in her apartment building. Barbie seems to be dragging a bit because she never dreams. She remembers dreaming as a child; wonderful vivid dreams, but those times are long past. When a creature from her dreams dies in front of her on the street and gives her a treasure, Barbie lapses in to a permanent dream state that leads her back to her childhood dream-land where she is a princess and must save the dream land from the Cuckoo. Barbie's friends walk the path of the moon in a effort to save her. In the end nothing is quite as it seems and Barbie's friends' efforts may have put the real world at risk.The artwork in these books is great. The story is amazing. You really feel for all of the characters and relate with them. The plot pulls you through as you wonder what the next page will bring. Full of creative ideas, intriguing thoughts, creative worlds, and of course the God of Dreams; this was another amazing installment to the Sandman series. I love these stories; they always open your mind to new possibilities and wonders. Not to mention that in general the stories are just well told with a deep mythos behind them.I look forward to reading the next Sandman Volume.
• mickyfine

  (1/5)

  And this is where I part ways with Sandman. I've had mixed feelings about the series since the first volume and the gruesome levels in this one pushed me firmly into the "not for me" camp. While I thoroughly enjoy the creepiness of Gaiman's other works, the graphic novel format takes away the distance my brain can create between me and horrifying images that are done solely in text. I also found the inconsistent art (not just between issues but within them) increasingly frustrating.
• readingover50

  (4/5)

  My favorite in the series so far. The story of Princess Barbara and the small kingdom of dreams she rules over. That kingdom is being threatened by The Cuckoo. I liked the telling of the tale alternating between the kingdom and what is happening on earth. There are a bunch of cool characters in here, and not all of them get out alive.
• xicanti_1

  (5/5)

  Barbie, a fairly minor character from The Doll's House, takes centre stage as her dream world comes back to haunt her.Many people dislike this volume. I can see where they're coming from; Gaiman isn't dealing with the most palatable of themes here, and I'm sure that fantasy/horror readers are particularly likely to find the resolution distasteful. Personally, however, I feel that this is one of the stronger volumes in the series. Characterization isn't always Gaiman's strong point, but he's done some wonderful things here. I found it very easy to feel for these people. Barbie, unable to dream since her encounter with the dream vortex; Hazel, seemingly tough but so unworldly that she knows next to nothing about pregnancy; Foxglove, haunted by an old lover with whom the reader is already acquainted. The story comes alive through them, and for the first time we begin to get a feel for how tightly all the mortals who wander into Dream's world are connected.Most of all, though, I love Wanda. I recall reading that the creative team received hate mail when she debuted in the first issue of this story arc. Readers were deeply offended that Gaiman would include a transsexual character. But by the time A Game of You had wound to a close, those same readers were writing in to say how much they loved her. While Gaiman does deal with some issues surrounding her transsexuality, he treats Wanda as a person above all else. She's just a normal girl who happens to have been born in a man's body.So I love this one. I, like many others, can't say I'm entirely comfortable with the theme, but I love the execution. And I don't think Gaiman treats the resolution as either a negative or a loss. It's simply a shift, a change in Barbie's world.Highly recommended. This one is very stand-alone, too, so you don't have to have read the rest of the series in order to enjoy it. I do recommend, however, that you pair it with Death: The Time of Your Life. It features Hazel and Foxglove, and it deals with many similar ideas.
• sammii507

  (5/5)

  Wonderful like all the rest! :)
• trishaj-2

  (2/5)

  Remember, 2 stars means, "it was ok". I didn't hate this. What I hate is that I didn't love it. I've had this graphic novel on my TBR for about four years. It's the very first graphic novel that I have ever bought. I have the greatest respect for Neil Gaiman. He is one of my favorite authors which is why I wanted to love this graphic novel.
  
  This is the story of Barbara, a young woman trying to reinvent herself after a divorce, I guess you could say, and her LGBT friends. They soon find out that there is more to the world than their every day NYC. We meet these cartoonish characters who are trying to protect Barbara. That's a very bad synopsis but I don't know what else to say without giving away too much.
  
  The thing is, I didn't like any of the characters. Seriously, none of them. The gay'isms seemed contrived just to add humor and the mystical elements of the story were disjointed. The artwork was pretty great though. I haven't read a lot of graphic novels to be able to compare it or accurately judge it, but I thought the imagery in the story was compelling and just about the only thing about this Sandman volume that I really liked. There were probably subtleties, nuances, and symbolism that I wasn't getting and added to why I didn't like the story.
  
  I know that I wouldn't recommend this volume to any fellow readers but I have no idea if I'm going to try and read any other of Neil Gaiman's graphic novels. I sincerely hate that I was disappointed in this one and don't know if I want to take a chance on being disappointed with another of Gaiman's works.
• heidilove_1

  (4/5)

  the sandman series only gets better the more you read.
• ragwaine

  (4/5)

  Cool ideas, kinda slow after fourth chapter. Dark, funny.
• deslni01

  (4/5)

  A Game of You, the fifth volume in Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe is an arc about a girl named Barbie - who made a brief cameo with her husband Ken in A Doll's House - and her current state of dreaming.Unlike most of the other volumes, Morpheus does not play much of a role in this work. He shows up at the very beginning and the end, to take care of business in Barbie's dreamworld. The story also touches dramatically on identity, as many of the characters are struggling with it in their lives.A Game of You is a thought provoking addition to the Sandman series and remains dark - and sad - even though it deviates from the horror that is characteristic of some of the earlier volumes.
• booksfordinner

  (4/5)

  Some good stories in this volume, but it is rather discounted, with all the different artists and all the stories being one-off-res, besides the two Orpheus stories. Good but not the best of these so far.
• gbill_7

  (4/5)

  A tight story blending reality and a recurring dream, the great art one comes to expect in this series, humor, a really gross part that I won’t describe, and an understanding and acceptance of transgender people that was ahead of its time in 1991-1992.
• thedivineoomba

  (3/5)

  Out of all the volumes I've read do far, I think this one is my least favorite. The story is interesting, but I found things a little bit too graphic, too violent. My favorite chapter was the last one, It has an interesting twist, and I especially liked the symbology of the story.
• crowyhead

  (5/5)

  While this story arc is linked to the rest of the series, it is also one of the most self-contained of the story arcs and stands alone very well. Barbie, who was a marginal character in A Doll's House, has separated from her husband and is living in a small New York apartment building with a cast of rather odd characters. There's Wanda, a transwoman who is Barbie's best friend and protector; Hazel (who might be pregnant) and Foxglove, the punk lesbian couple; Thessaly, a bespectacled witch; and George, the recluse who lives on the top floor. When Barbie is drawn back into the dream world she visited every night as a child, the other women must figure out how to protect her and bring her home. Meanwhile, Barbie is on a quest to save the kingdom from a mysterious adversary known as The Cuckoo.This has always been one of my favorites, because I love the interaction between all the characters. Hazel and Foxglove are particularly great, and I kind of wish Gaiman had seen fit to give them a starring role later on. Ah well...
• stipe168

  (5/5)

  one of my favorites among favorites.. i love the idea of your childhood dreams coming to life in the "real" world. read it.
• reconditereader

  (5/5)

  Neil Gaiman's Sandman series is one of the finest examples of storytelling I've ever seen, graphic or otherwise. The collection A Game of You is about identity and about what happens to the worlds we create as children.
• tiamatq_1

  (4/5)

  So this book gets mixed reviews, obviously. I'm a Sandman nut, and I really enjoyed it. Yes, it doesn't jive with most of the traditional volumes - but it's also just as important to the storyline as any of the other books. So if you want to get the full impact of the Sandman storyline, read this book! It's considerably dark, like a fair amount of Sandman, and has some of that fun horror of the earlier volumes mixed in. Also, if you want to enjoy and understand the characters that show up in the Death spin offs, you gotta read A Game of You. I think it's an often misunderstood book - give it a chance.
• 5eva5

  (5/5)

  In which Morpheus, the Dream King, the Sandman, won't even appear until the very end - another installment in the series that makes the very brave move of hardly including its main character. Not only that, the majority of the story doesn't even take place in the real world - most of the action takes place in a dreamer's mind. Barbie's childhood fantasy of being a princess in a faraway land turns out to be not a fantasy at all and when the Cuckoo threatens to take over, the princess' loyal friends call her back into their world to deal with the threat.Although about many different things - friendship, loyalty, and what it entails to be female - the main theme in this installment is the question of identity and most, if not all, of the characters are different than they appear to be, whether by choice or by nature. Its main character is after all Barbie, whose ex, Ken, has left her for a woman called Sindy (the name of the British version of the Barbie-doll), so it should be assumed that the character would have no depth to her at all, when in fact, she has created a dreamworld so vivid it affects the real world more than any dream should.Since they all are, I needn't point out that this is one of my favorite installments. Fairy tales will easily win me over and this one has the princess, the quest, the betrayal, and some sort of happy ending, although not perfect - it wouldn't fit the story if it was. It also has one of the saddest moments ("My princess? I came for you..."), one of the loveliest ("Do you know how much a baby is going to cost us?"), and one of the funnier ("New age? No. Quite the opposite, really."). I do appreciate that the magic in this one isn't nice or clean, but rather nasty and bloody, and that it does have real repercussions for all involved, which does raise the stakes quite a bit. Overall an extremely enjoyable story for its introduction of a group of characters that I feel the richer for having been introduced to.
• michael8xolotl

  (2/5)

  Attempts depth, fails.
• bnielsen_30

  (4/5)

  Barbie har forladt Ken og er holdt op med at drømme. I drømmeverdenen er en del af verden derfor ved at gå i opløsning og indbyggerne forsøger at få kontakt igen.En gigantisk hund, Martin Tenbones, dukker op, men bliver skudt og dræbt af politiet. Forinden når den dog at give Barbie en Porpentine og advare mod The Cuckoo.Barbie bor i en lille lejlighed i New York. Her er også Wanda, som er en trans og Barbies ven og beskytter. Et lesbisk par, Hazel og Foxglove. Thessaly, en heks og George, en noget ensom fyr, som faktisk er i ledtog med The Cuckoo. Barbie bliver trukket tilbage i Drømmeverdenen for at redde kongeriget og de andre kvinder forsøger at hjælpe.I Drømmeverdenen står det skidt til. Gøgen, The Cuckoo, viser sig at være en del af Barbie, i form af en lille pige. Gøgen bruger Porpentine stenen og en Hierogram klippe til at få Murphy, dvs Morpheus til at dukke op og tilintetgøre den del af verden. Men han er ikke begejstret.Barbie får lov at bestemme hvad der nu skal ske og Gøgen får lov at flyve ud i verden hvilket Thessaly bliver meget vred over. De andre får lov at vende tilbage omend Wanda og George ikke kommer tilbage i levende live.Herligt anderledes eventyr.
• pokylittlepuppy

  (5/5)

  Wow. I loved this. Absolutely the best book so far. There isn't really anything I didn't like, and it kept doing more and more things I like on top of the things I already liked. Well except, I think it is responsible for an extremely grisly nightmare I had, but that is what I get for bedtime reading.I love the atmosphere of the parts of the series set in sketchy '80s NYC. I love all the stories with a woman dealing with intrusions of the supernatural in her normal life, and having to go be brave and face it down. Gaiman deserves a lot of thanks for exercising that precedent so well, having laid the influential groundwork for tons of other things I love. Rose's story in book 2 felt that way, and Barbie's story here does too.I love creepy awesome Thessaly and everything she does. I love the creepy nightmare birds. I love everyone in the apartment building and everything about the horrible night they spend together. God I mean it is gruesome, but, really great. Maybe my entirely favorite moment was when Barbie is first dozing off in front of the TV and the fairy pops in to give her a warning, and she snaps herself awake and ruins it.It's possible it isn't a great sign that my favorite book so far is the one where the Dream King is only in it for about 5 pages. But I'm not too concerned.
• gingerbreadman_1

  (4/5)

  Another single story line, but this time taking us in a completely new direction. Dream is only featured briefly in this tale set on a small skerry in the dream archipelago, where a small spark of resistance stands against the mighty Cuckoo. Barbie from “Doll’s house” is the one doing the dreaming (we saw a glimpse of this The Land aldready in that book), while living in a new collective building. In New York this time, but populated by equally unusual companions. The lesbian couple are less gothic this time though, the transvestite is transgender – and the guy in the attic is less jovial.It could be because Stephen Delany’s rather analytic foreword (as usual: best to save that for after reading) is setting my thoughts on new paths, but it seems to me this is the first time we see a Sandman story play on a major theme without really pointing it out. So many of the storylines and anecdotes here deal with transition, change, taking control of your own identity: from Wanda’s transsexualism to Barbie’s constant changing of her face to Hazel having to embrace a new aspect of womanhood to the Cuckoo finally leaving nest. But also the difficulties that come with that, and how easy it is to get stuck in between or in imitation: Wanda’s unfinished sex change, Thessaly’s refusal do dismiss dead George, the Weirdzos’ backward imitation of Hyperman; and again, the Cuckoo. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the scariest, most uncontrollable creatures of the Land are called “tweeners”.This is a solid installment in the Sandman series, if perhaps not my personal favorite. Thessaly is probably my favorite character here – the very definition of anti-heroine with an unashamed personal agenda of revenge, in rabbit slippers! The ending feels a bit clumsy though (not the funeral bit, which is sad and wonderful, but the exposition to tie up all loose ends). Some of the things planted here, like Alianora who created that dream skerry, I can’t remember how (or if) they play out later in the series. Very eager to continue.
• stewartfritz-1

  (3/5)

  5 stars for the Whedonesque fleshing-out of a minor character several volumes ago into a main story arc that's as whimsical and disturbing as anything in Coraline or Graveyard Book, minus 2 stars for the cardboard LGBT characters, one of whom seems to exist only to be a token trans character (killed off needlessly like a character in a bad horror movie) and the other who seems to have not even a baseline 7-grade Health class knowledge of how human reproduction works. Glad Gaiman's moved past this stuff, but hooboy.
• akmargie

  (5/5)

  My favorite so far and yes it might be premature cause we know how batty I am for Gaiman. But I loved Wanda.
• aaronpt

  (4/5)

  In comparison to the high-water mark of the series so far, 'Season of Mists', my enthusiasm for 'A Game of You' was muted. It's a dark story, full of the tragedies of the waking world, not the high-flying fantasy of its predecesor.It's still an great story well told, inventive and exciting, but I can't help but miss the warm embrace of hell, and the escapism it brought with it.
• reallifereading

  (4/5)

  This is my favourite of the Sandman series so far!
• avoraciousreader

  (3/5)

  *Book source ~ LibraryFrom Goodreads:Take an apartment house, mix in a drag queen, a lesbian couple, some talking animals, a talking severed head, a confused heroine, and the deadly Cuckoo. Stir vigorously with a hurricane and Morpheus himself, and you get this fifth installment of the Sandman series. This story stars Barbie, who first makes an appearance in The Doll's House, who here finds herself a princess in a vivid dreamworld.The illustrations are still pretty good, but I wasn’t as pleased with this story arc. Maybe because I don’t give a shit about Barbie. Anyway, besides the fact that dumbass Barbie is the center of this, it’s a bit too out there for me. Meaning, I had a hard time grasping some of the concepts. But at least Morpheus is still a hottie and fascinating. And Thessaly is an interesting (and a bit scary) character. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of her. I really hated the ending though.