Rating: 
Summary: a mite disappointing
Review: I spent a $15 gift certificate when I bought this book, so I ended up paying about $11 myself. While I love Gaiman's work, I have to say that I would not have spent $25 of my own money on it. I originally bought the comic book segment about Dream, and it was fabulous. I was disappointed when I discovered that the Dream segment is the best of the seven. The others, especially Destruction, Despair, and Destiny, left me wanting more. But the art is beautiful, and will be enjoyed by long-time Sandman fans. I recommend you visit your local comic shop and skim through it before deciding.
Rating:
Summary: Endlessly mixed reviews...
Review: I think this book has earned a number of mixed reviews and IMHO I think it's deservedly so. I think (like many others) that the strongest stories are the ones about Desire, Death, Dream, and Destruction (though you could say it was a story with Destruction AND Delirium) in that order. If you have the cash and are already familiar with the Endless, then I think these stories would make any fan happy. I liked how the Desire story didn't portray him/her as a villain like he/she is usually depicted. The artwork for that story was also very erotic which was appropriate for Desire. That's the sexiest village I've ever seen! The story with Death seems like a typical Death story: Someone goes on a metaphysical journey, meets Death, wonders who she is, She goes and brings Death of some kind to somone(s) and the person goes on with their life in an altered manner because of their knowledge of Death. Not that I'm complaining. As for Dream, it's always interesting to read about him in an earlier incarnation, so early in fact he claimed that Desire was his favorite sibling, "so funny and kind" (indeed!) and here we see how the animosity between them came to be. We also find out who his love was (as hinted in the "Season of Mists" storyline when Desire mentioned "that pretty plane with all the twinkly lights"). Delirium is also still know as "Delight" at this juncture in time. Dream is also more of a fragile being at this point in time, he also seems to be a romantic, it's easy to see how he built himself up as a stone hard being after this event. In the story about Destruction, he really is a complex personality with his internal struggles with his abandoned responsibilities and going on with his "life". I have to wonder why Delirium is with him since this story seems to be after "Brief Lives" and he was supposed to have gone off to another plane where they couldn't find him. The weakest ones for me are Despair, Destiny and Delirium. I think the Despair section was supposed to be portraits, which are great in that aspect, but couldn't Neil have written more of a story about this enigmatic/intriguing sibling of the Endless? The Destiny section isn't really anything we haven't heard before. It's just his cloaked figure strolling around in his garden like we've seen many times before and a nararator bemoaning Destiny's lot in life. I couldn't follow the Delirium story that well, maybe that was the way it was supposed to be. It seemed to be about a bunch of crazy (to us) people that her siblings were controlling in the real world and how they were being manuvered in the real world in order to save her (Delirium somehow being "captured" or something). It certainly confused me! All in all, I hope Neil writes more "Endless" stories, I feel like we are only scratching the surface of these complex characters!
Rating: 
Summary: whoa.
Review: I was really, really disappointed. I was a big fan of the
Sandman comics, so when this came out I scraped together the money and bought it. You'd expect that there'd be some mention of the new Dream in here, and there is in Delight, but it's a brief, brief mention. The story, of course, focuses on Delight, with Sandman and Matthew rescuing her acting as a frame. Little detail is given about the latter two. The one Dream story is lacking; it focuses more on a girl from an alien planet falling in love with a sun that it does Dream. It teases you with some reference to how Desire and Dream once got along, but his and Desire's reaction to his wayward lover and the way she falls in love "I'll be your sun -- if you'll have me" -- just seems like the stuff of daytime soaps. Minus the emotion. The two never really seemed to be in love to begin with, and it seems blatantly obvious how the story will end when people ask the girl whether or not she loves Dream. The only cool part about the entire story was Sol. The Desire 'story' seems more like a backdrop for a series of images of bare breasts. A girl playing hard to get to make a guy fall in love with her and visiting a witch who sucks on sausages while talking to her. Desire's story was cool, but none too original. All in all, the stories seem rather cheesed, banal, and some, pornograpic. If I didn't already like Sandman so much I probably never would've read past the Death story.
Rating: 
Summary: Expectations
Review: If you're buying this book as a continuation of Sandman or as a prologue that will solve major plot points than don't buy this book.
This book is gorgeous, and Neil Gaiman is, as always, a veritable god. The stories are merely stories that needed to be told. They are everything they should be. Enraging, beautiful, haunting, disturbing.
Rating: 
Summary: This Could Not Have Been Written By Gaiman
Review: Let me start by saying that I love Neil Gaiman's work. He is a modern genius, a brilliant storyteller and weaver of characters and plot. And that is why I know the stories in Endless Nights were not, in fact, written by Neil Gaiman. These stories are each deeply flawed. Deeply. While Gaiman can tell you more about a character in three panels, these stories go their entire length without giving any real personality to the characters. They are empty and two-dimensional. The stories themselves are far worse- they have no poetry. They are completely contrived and unconvincing. They go nowhere. Characters have no consistency, rhyme, or reason. The plots move along as if written by people unfamiliar with storytelling, and only basically familiar with Gaiman's rich universe. Several feel as if they are trying hard to emulate Gaiman's style, but just come out sounding like something the average high school student would come up with. Perhaps he hired a ghost writer or collected some fan fiction together. But the bottom line is that if you have any love for the Sandman series, dont read this book. Gaiman surely didnt write it, and it shows in every page.
Rating:
Summary: More modern mythmaking
Review: Neil Gaiman is often compared to Lewis Carroll as a maker of modern fairytales and myths. In "Endless Nights," he provides yet more evidence as to why these comparisons are justified. Like the rest of Gaiman's "Sandman" series, "Endless Nights" tells stories about beings of great power, which represent universal themes and truths. In addition to the Endless, the seven great beings embodying essential aspects of all living things (Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Delirium, and Desire), in "Endless Nights" we also find references to cosmic topics like the origins and personalities of the stars and planets, powerful stories in the tradition of the best folktales, and intensely personal stories of modern people. The illustrations of this book are top-notch, truly some fantasy-pairings of visual stylists with Gaiman's unique style. Each story has a different illustrator, and while all are good, a few stand out. Milo Manara's vision of Desire is surely the best I have ever seen, Barron Storey's "15 Portraits of Despair" demands that each page be examined closely, Bill Sienkiewicz's take on Delirium is so perfect that one wonders why it wasn't done before, and Frank Quitely's short tale of Destiny is the perfect end to the book. The only thing going against the book, I would say, is that it's billed as a "Sandman" graphic novel, but it really is not one. Its stories, while intriguing, do not fit in effectively with the rest of the Sandman stories. Rather, they are stand-alone stories about the Endless, which means that they're good stories, but they're not an integral part of the larger work of the "Sandman" series. It has been almost ten years since the end of the original "Sandman" series, and it shows. The only other time since then that Gaiman has revisited these characters was in the excellent "The Dream Hunters," which was more of an integral part of the "Sandman" story than "Endless Nights" is. Still, other than the minor disappointment of not being a better fit for the "Sandman" story arc in general, "Endless Nights" is a fine piece of work in itself, and can be enjoyed many times. The art is beautiful, the stories rich and full of meaning and cultural reference. I would recommend it to just about anyone, but especially fans of Neil Gaiman's other work, fans of the Endless, and avid readers of fairytales and mythology.
Rating:
Summary: More modern mythmaking
Review: Neil Gaiman is often compared to Lewis Carroll as a maker of modern fairytales and myths. In "Endless Nights," he provides yet more evidence as to why these comparisons are justified. Like the rest of Gaiman's "Sandman" series, "Endless Nights" tells stories about beings of great power, which represent universal themes and truths. In addition to the Endless, the seven great beings embodying essential aspects of all living things (Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Despair, Delirium, and Desire), in "Endless Nights" we also find references to cosmic topics like the origins and personalities of the stars and planets, powerful stories in the tradition of the best folktales, and intensely personal stories of modern people. The illustrations of this book are top-notch, truly some fantasy-pairings of visual stylists with Gaiman's unique style. Each story has a different illustrator, and while all are good, a few stand out. Milo Manara's vision of Desire is surely the best I have ever seen, Barron Storey's "15 Portraits of Despair" demands that each page be examined closely, Bill Sienkiewicz's take on Delirium is so perfect that one wonders why it wasn't done before, and Frank Quitely's short tale of Destiny is the perfect end to the book. The only thing going against the book, I would say, is that it's billed as a "Sandman" graphic novel, but it really is not one. Its stories, while intriguing, do not fit in effectively with the rest of the Sandman stories. Rather, they are stand-alone stories about the Endless, which means that they're good stories, but they're not an integral part of the larger work of the "Sandman" series. It has been almost ten years since the end of the original "Sandman" series, and it shows. The only other time since then that Gaiman has revisited these characters was in the excellent "The Dream Hunters," which was more of an integral part of the "Sandman" story than "Endless Nights" is. Still, other than the minor disappointment of not being a better fit for the "Sandman" story arc in general, "Endless Nights" is a fine piece of work in itself, and can be enjoyed many times. The art is beautiful, the stories rich and full of meaning and cultural reference. I would recommend it to just about anyone, but especially fans of Neil Gaiman's other work, fans of the Endless, and avid readers of fairytales and mythology.
Rating:
Summary: 7 New Stories of the Endless
Review: Neil Gaiman revisits his creations, the Endless, in this collection of new stories. Working with some of the top artists in comics, Gaiman focuses on stories that feature each one of his creations with varying degrees of success.
Death- the idea behind this story is an old one: "How can someone cheat Death?" Gaiman's take on this old chestnut is not really a new one, (In fact, the movie GROUNDHOG DAY comes to mind) but P. Craig Russell's art makes the most of a forgettable tale.
Desire- This is the first Desire story that I feel truly captures the appeal of the character. This story of someone paying the ultimate price for her desire and still believing it was worth it, goes a long way in showing me what Gaiman was trying to convey with this character all along. Milo Manara does a fine job on this story as it plays well to his strength as a storyteller.
Dream- Wonderfully otherworldly art by Prado is a welcome sight on this story. It takes place in the distant past when our sun was young and Gaiman shows long time fans the reason for the animosity between Dream and Desire.
Delirium- Sienkiewicz is at his lunatic best with this trip into Delirium's realm. When Delirium falls too deeply into her own world, Dream and Delirium's faithful dog, Barnabas, collect some denizens of her realm to go in and find her. Gaiman cleverly utilizes Sienkiewicz's inspired illustrations to paint a portrait of what it is like inside the minds of Delerium's charges.
Despair- 15 intuitive portraits of Despair by Barron Storey are used as templates for short pieces by Gaiman allowing the reader to get a glimpse of Despair's realm. Each story is as dark as Storey's art is haunting.
Destruction- This is basically a decent SF story that happens to have Destruction (and Delirium) in it. Their presence is superfluous to this tale of weapons from another time invading our world.
Destiny- Just another stroll through Destiny's garden, albeit with great art by Quitely. One day Gaiman will get around to writing a story with this character, but this isn't it. This collection should satisfy fans of the series, but it lacks the epic scope of Gaiman's Sandman series. But until Gaiman decides that he wants to take another run at his creations this will have to do.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but not essential
Review: One of the pleasures of the original series is its thematic unity, and here we get more a grab bag of stories. So probably best compared to Dream Country, Worlds End, or Fables and
Reflection. In the end, I think it falls short of those. Death, Desire, Dream are all good stories; Despair is an interesting collage; Delirium and Destruction have promising elements, but do not fully develop (particularly disappointing with the Destruction tale - I recognize that Delirium, like Destiny is tough to write a developed story about); and Destiny is a pleasant, but unengaging rumination (though to be fair it's HARD to make any story about Destiny engaging as he/it is the least "human" of the bunch.) Had this come out during the series it would have been panned as a disappointment. Nowadays, it's a pleasant piffle, to be enjoyed, but will never truly be a part of the canon. (no more than Dream Hunters was). This might sound all together too negative, and that's not my purpose. I did enjoy the stories, Gaiman is as always an excellent writer. But the "you can't go home again" cliche rings true here.
Rating:
Summary: Great return to great characters
Review: Reading this made me feel like I'd never left. Gaiman was pushing the envelope near the end of the series, and while he could have returned to Sandman by just phoning it in (I'd still have been happy), he decides to push the envelope still. Read the Desire or Despair chapters to see what I mean. Then read the Destruction or Death stories to get back to 'classic' Sandman stuff. Some might not get the references (like the DCU references in the Dream story (hint: Green Lantern and Superman mythos)). Some won't. That's the way it should be. Great job Neil.
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