I've heard the majority of the Sandman fans and people on this board either don't like A Game of You or won't read it. Would anyone like to explain why they don't like it or won't read it?

[This message has been edited by Morpheus (edited 03-06-2002).]

To be honest ,a game of you is one of my favorites, it is a great story at least I think so. it has the first apperance of thessaly(one of my all time favorite characters)and ties together some of the older stories in previous collections im not saying its the best, but your freind may want to give it a try because I see nothing wrong with a game of you and your freind may agree. I will be checking the board to see why other people do not as I have no other freinds that partake in the joy that is gaiman (never mind reading at all.)to compare opinions, so with this I hope I am not wished stoned to death for saying I like something that others do not.

[This message has been edited by hunteraom26 (edited 01-31-2002).]

Game of You is the best of them all. It made me cry.

Actually, I like the book too. The only problems I had were that the story was more darker than usual and the infamous scene with the baby.

I wasn't crazy about A Game of You at first, but then the more I read it, the more I liked it. When I had several friends reading The Sandman, it was all their favorite book of the series.

I loved a Game of You, for me it's not just a great, sweet and tragic story, but also has got most of the recurring themes in Sandman inside it.

Although I'm not saying I subscribe to all these theories, I think the major reasons for not liking A Game Of You would be:

1. Morpheus hardly appears, especially when compared to, say, Brief Lives, or Season Of Mists.
2. For male readers, they may dislike it because none of the central characters in the story are male, with the exception of Wanda... who isn't exactly someone males can relate to. In fact, it's full of strong female figures - a take-no-crap witch, a lesbian couple - who males may feel intimidated by. (Okay, I'm male, and I'm not bothered by the fact that the central characters are all female. But I know people who didn't like the collection, and they are the same ones who slammed me for reading Bridget Jones' Diary... because, they said, it's a woman's book.)
3. The feel of the book is very different to the others in the series. If P&N was 'traditional' horror, in the style of the old EC comics, Brief Lives is a road trip taken by two beings of unimaginable power, Season Of Mists was a Miltonian saga with a political slant... well, if you're pigeonholing, A Game Of You is closest to children's fantasy fiction - I'm thinking CS Lewis, particularly with the scene directly swiped from 'The Last Battle'. I guess people could dislike it for that reason, because they feel they've moved on from that kind of book, as they read CS Lewis when they were children...
4. (And I'm struggling to come up with any now) The story runs on a completely different level than the preceding volume, A Season Of Mists. It's pretty anti-climatic compared to the epic scale of SoM. Well... you go from the Dreaming, full of hundreds of Gods of every pantheon imaginable, to some rickety old house with a few dysfunctional people in it. It isn't what people are expecting as the follow-up to SoM, and people are often left unhappy by the unexpected.

Personally, I'm not too keen on GoY, but I don't really know why. Every time I read it, I love it and acknowledge that it's a great story, but later I'm reluctant to re-read it again.

-SLASH-

A Game of You is great. Its a near masterpiece. But that chapter not drawn by McManus seriously detracts from the book. Why did they do it? Damndamndamndamn.

[This message has been edited by mtxx (edited 02-01-2002).]

Well, in the Sandman Companion, neil talks about how the majority of guys hated this story arc and it was their least favorite, while for the majority of girls it was their favorite story arc and they loved it.

It has something to do with not having any real male roles, except for the crow guy, and even then he has no redeeming qualities.

I also like GoY alot. I'd also recommend the Jonathan Carroll books "Bones of the Moon" which I think inspired it.

I liked that it moved the focus of the story to ordinary people, and how they caught up in the things that are going on which they have no knowledge of.

The Game of you was a risk Mr Gaiman had the guts to take. An entire story almost without his main characters. We don't see much of the Endless. I totally fell in love with the girls (well maybe not Thessaly)and the ending disturbed me. That's what a like about a book or a comic. If you don't feel a thing after turning the last page, then I don't think it was worth reading.

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Originally posted by denver:
I also like GoY alot. I'd also recommend the Jonathan Carroll books "Bones of the Moon" which I think inspired it.

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According to "The Sandman Companion" Neil said that he changed the storyline in "A Doll's House" because of Jonathan Carroll's book. Barbie's dream was the only thing that was left in that story that was reminiscent of what he had in mind.

When Mr. Carroll contacted him and Neil mentioned what he originally intended to do with the story, Carroll encouraged him to do it anyway instead of deter him, and the rest is history.

I admit to feeling a little uneasy after reading this book for the reasons mentioned by the other men in this thread, but I appreciated the craftmanship behind the structure of it and I accepted the "realness" of even the "fantasy characters" in Alianora's/Princess Barbara's Land. True art should make you react to what you see on the canvas, not necessarily make you "feel good" about it afterwards.

A Game of You is True Art IMHO.

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I liked that it moved the focus of the story to ordinary people, and how they caught up in the things that are going on which they have no knowledge of.

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I felt that, like Mr. Delany said in his introduction, the fantasy and the "reality" elements interchanged in intricate and fascinating ways. High marks to everyone involved.

[This message has been edited by Elric3960 (edited 02-09-2002).]

[This message has been edited by Elric3960 (edited 02-09-2002).]

I was in Borders a few days ago with 40 bucks in my pocket. I figured it was time to complete my collection, so I picked up "Game of You" and flipped through it. I just got seriously grossed out and disturbed, and couldn't really read it or look at it. I put it down and picked up a Preacher TPB...
And no, I didn't end up buying either of them, but i figured I'd demonstrate the effect that thing has on me. Its destined to be the whole in my collection. Maybe I can fill it with my "V for Vendetta" comics, just to be funny...

the (hopes Neil and Steve Dillion never team up) floyd

Floyd, care to explain why you were disturbed and grossed out? I'm curious since A Game of You is for me such a sweet story, very lyric sometimes, and with the sort of "quiet" feeling present also in "dream of a Thousand cats", some parts of Season of Mists and The Wake.
Of curse there's the baby dream and Geroge face, but if you think about other story arches they also got their share of gore stuff.
Your thoughts?

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Originally posted by The Lord of Nothings:
I was in Borders a few days ago with 40 bucks in my pocket. I figured it was time to complete my collection, so I picked up "Game of You" and flipped through it. I just got seriously grossed out and disturbed, and couldn't really read it or look at it. I put it down and picked up a Preacher TPB...
And no, I didn't end up buying either of them, but i figured I'd demonstrate the effect that thing has on me. Its destined to be the whole in my collection. Maybe I can fill it with my "V for Vendetta" comics, just to be funny...

the (hopes Neil and Steve Dillion never team up) floyd

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I would get it. I was grossed out at first, but when I got through, I found out it was a really good story.

See, I didn't really like A Game of You as much as the others [although I did like it] because of the art - specifically the colouring. It was kind of dull and oppressive, and I felt like I coudln't breath through the whole thing.

I didn't get anything 'quiet' about it. It left me profoundly disturbed - although 'The Land' scenes struck me as skewed, and contributed to the 'oppressive' feel of the book, and were at times nauseating.

I liked the characters - and I actually liked Thesally most of all.

I think the part of the entire Sandman run that grossed me out the most was the dead foetus incarnate in 'Season Of Mists' ("Hello, Charles....").
GoY wasn't too bad, and George's face just interested me more. I loved the idea of Thessally being this quiet, bookish nerd and then when everyone else is falling apart, she becomes this completely collected, focussed warrior-witch.

-SLASH-

Well, it might be I'm a disturbed weirdo, but the foetus in Season of mists was very funny to me -in a dark and macabre way of course, but that whole issue in the boarding school is one of my favourties, because it's creepy and really disturbing, but at the same time it's got brilliant moments of humour in it.

I liked a Game of You because it was what my mother would refer to as "A Good Story That I Didn't Necessarily Agree With". I read most of sandman at a summer course last year. Since I had very little free time (not that that stopped the entire DM class from reading Sandman under the tables) I read most of them at night. At that stage I was still...nervous in the dark, but I STILL read the book more or less from start to finish on my own in a dark room in the middle of the night, and I STILL enjoyed it. I liked the characters, but there were parts of it that made me jumpy (especially the bit with the babies and those weird monsters in the wood) that would have messed up the story if they had been left out. Give you friend a Game of You. If I could handle it in those conditions, I think she can bear it.

My friend has already read it and liked it. It did creep her out a little.