10 books like The Sandman Vol. 4

The story unfolds somewhat mysteriously, in that WWII historians may be a bit confused. The annihilation of Dresden, Germany through intense fire-bombing by the allies leaves little hope that anyone could survive long, yet a young girl is moving through the neighborhoods unscathed. She steals books from the library of a rich, sophisticated lady who has all but surrendered to her fate. The premise provides a nice counter to the book burning by the Nazis in the years leading up to military action. Although the girl is hardly a military hero, her persistence and courage renders her a testament to the raw power of the human spirit. In her own way, she is defiant of the aggressors attacking her home and threatening her life.

I got this book in the airport on my way back from a summer spent in England studying King Arthur (both the legend and the historical figure). Reaper Man was my introduction to Pratchett and I am grateful every day that I chose this and not the book on the fall of Rome that was also in the running for my attention. Pratchett’s Death is a delight, especially in this outing where he has lost his job and takes up work on a farm to help bring in the harvest. Unfortunately, his absence causes all kinds of problems (at least until a new Death is created to take his position) and ends up involving an undead wizard, a support group for various monsters, and a sentient compost heap. Also Death rides a horse named Binky! Equal turns hilarious and biting, Reaper Man is still one of my comfort reads.

The first time I saw Pretty Deadly on the shelves at my local comic book store, I was fascinated and chilled by the cover art, and the story within did not disappoint. This Eisner-Award-nominated graphic novel by Captain Marvel writer Kelly Sue DeConnick melds Western and horror genres for a macabre tale about Death’s daughter, Deathface Ginny, riding a horse made of smoke and wind across the harsh and unrelenting landscapes of a brutal Wild West, doling out retribution. I love me some grim reaping, and the same dark, evocative imager. I love me some grim reaping, and I wanted the same dark, evocative imagery to come through on my pages and through Hettie’s own journey with the cursed gun Diablo at her side.   

This is the first in his Incarnations of Immortality and I read this book when I was likely in middle school. While I was disappointed in later books in the series, On a Pale Horse still holds up pretty well. An ordinary guy shoots Death and then must take up his mantle. He has no idea how to do the job. While not laugh out loud funny, like Pratchett, Pale Horse has its moments of humor—the scene where Death collects the soul of an atheist comes to mind. It asks the questions about what life means, examines what might happen in the afterlife, and wonders if death/Death is really something to fear.

I love this graphic novel about Morpheus the God of Dreams and the other gods that inhabit humanity’s unconscious aka the Endless. He escapes from imprisonment and struggles to rebuild our dreamworld called The Dreaming. I love that Morpheus’ problems are basically the same as ours. He’s trying to find his place in a world with surprising traps and a constantly evolving understanding of what it means.

As someone who spends my happiest moments in entirely made-up places with people who, it pains me to write, don’t actually exist, I am obsessed with the wavy lines between the life we imagine and the life we live. And no one writes about that cloudy blue haze between reality and our interior world better than Neil Gaiman. Shakespeare is glimpsed in other parts of the epic Sandman saga, but it is in the stand-alone story A Midsummer Night’s Dream where he is the star. It is both delightful and disturbing in a way that Gaiman is a master of.

This has it all. Every time I see the cover I think of the house where I grew up and I can picture the scene in the lounge on Christmas morning where I’m sorting the presents into piles for when my grandparents arrive, while watching this on BBC2. One year I got given it as a book, and it was a different experience to read it, but just as lovely.

The best book ever of all time, for instructing humans how to be more human is Where the Wild Things Are. I think you probably already know that those pages are complete perfection. So I will now turn your attention to Mr. Sendak’s other completely perfect pages of In the Night Kitchen. Maybe the second-best book ever of all time.

James Hillman is the kind of writer you sometimes have to stop, think and re-read, to work your way into what he is trying to say, but it repays the effort because what he says is always interesting. This book, about fantasy and imagination, explores the idea that we are more than our personal story, more than ego and self. For me as a writer, it changed the way I see the creative process, with imagination not being something we need to spark and drive, but a space we already inhabit. Imagination is our essence; we are the dream.

This book, like the previous one, is written by an anthropologist, and it describes the author’s experiences of learning dreaming techniques from a Toltec sorcerer. In that tradition, there are seven Gates of Dreaming, obstacles to be overcome if you want to achieve greater dream awareness and control, and the book looks at four of them. It’s thought-provoking but easy reading because it takes the form of a story, rather than a series of essays, and I enjoyed trying some of the ideas in my own dream practice.