Brief Lives
Aug. 5th, 2021 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishIn which Delirium and her big brother Dream go in search of Destruction, their brother who walked away from his duties and his family three hundred years ago.
I don't know why it took me a year to get around to reading Fables & Reflections but I'm glad I did. Both because I like it a great deal and because it got me moving on the rest of the saga.
Having said that ... this one didn't really catch me and I don't know why. It's got good minor characters in Ruby and Ishtar (and Barnabas, Destruction's canine companion), it's got an interesting expansion on the mythos of the Endless, it's got a good Death scene. It's got Dream denying that he's changed at all in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary. Maybe that's what frustrated me? Like A Game Of You, it's a very 'nothing has changed' story.
It's tempting to compare this to Season of Mists, the previous Dream-centric arc, which also ended in a reassertion of the status quo. But for whatever reason I liked Season of Mists a great deal more. I dunno. Peter Straub, in his Afterword, also got a lot more out of this story than I did.
I don't know why it took me a year to get around to reading Fables & Reflections but I'm glad I did. Both because I like it a great deal and because it got me moving on the rest of the saga.
Having said that ... this one didn't really catch me and I don't know why. It's got good minor characters in Ruby and Ishtar (and Barnabas, Destruction's canine companion), it's got an interesting expansion on the mythos of the Endless, it's got a good Death scene. It's got Dream denying that he's changed at all in the face of increasing evidence to the contrary. Maybe that's what frustrated me? Like A Game Of You, it's a very 'nothing has changed' story.
It's tempting to compare this to Season of Mists, the previous Dream-centric arc, which also ended in a reassertion of the status quo. But for whatever reason I liked Season of Mists a great deal more. I dunno. Peter Straub, in his Afterword, also got a lot more out of this story than I did.