Written by Neil Gaiman
Art by Yoshitaka Amano
There's a phrase that used to appear a lot in reviews of books and movies, a phrase that always made me cringe, and consequently I've never used it. But at the end of this review, I will use it for the first time. For the first time, it fits.
But that's the end; let's start at the beginning.
Neil Gaiman and Yoshitako Amano's *Sandman: The Dream Hunters* begins as a wager between a fox and a badger high in the mountains of Japan, near a lonely temple attended by a serene young monk. The male badger and female fox bet that whoever can drive the monk from his home can get the temple to live in, because it is bound to be more comfortable than either of their animal homes.
The bet doesn't get far. Each of the creatures cast powerful magical illusions to try and trick the young man into leaving his temple, but the monk is wise and sees through each of them. Then a strange thing happens: one night the fox appears to the monk as a freezing and beautiful woman in need of shelter. And though the monk overcomes the fox's fleshly temptations, he is so kind to her that the fox falls madly in love with him, just like that. And the tale is done with the badger.
The little white fox returns to the monk to apologize and beg to be the monk's friend, and she becomes a familiar site at the temple, as the monk goes about his daily duties and the fox goes about her nightly hunts, each retiring to their respective cot and den by night.
Until one night, the fox overhears a trio of demons on a mission to bring about the death of the monk-- a plot she is magically forbidden to tell the monk about directly. The monk will dream three dreams, and the third will kill him. And so the fox sets about doing everything she can to prevent the death of her love. By the end, both the fox and the monk will undertake powerful and painful journeys and learn the meaning of sacrifice in the name of love.
Neil Gaiman's story here is a faithful, even loving amalgamation of several versions of the love story of the fox and the monk, which he chanced to read while preparing to do the translations on *Princess Mononoke.* He tells his story in an amazing style that combines the sophistication of all his modern work with a enchanting, fairy tale simplicity and cadence. He repeats phrases and images, alluding to the oral tradition and casting a peaceful spell. This is a book that could be read to children, and yet it contains action and suspense that prove its modernity.
And it's a *Sandman* book, quite incidentally. The ancient tale Gaiman adapts involves a pilgrimage the monk takes to visit the King of Dreams, and when the King appears, we realize he is a Japanese version of Morpheus, or Dream, of Gaiman's comic series. Gaiman wrote the book as a ten-year anniversary celebration of *Sandman*, and it's to his credit that he chose to do something different, and more to his credit that something different becomes something moving and magical.
*Sandman: The Dream Hunters* is not a comic book proper, but rather (like Jon J. Muth's *Dracula*) is a prose work illustrated by Yoshitaka Amano. Amano is a famed Japanese illustrator whose designs have brought life to works as diverse as *Gatchaman*, *Final Fantasy* and *Vampire Hunter D*. His work has been exhibited at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York, and some of the exhibited work comes from *Dream Hunters*. Amano's paintings flow with energy and magic, but the striking thing is how literal they are-- like Gaiman's prose style, Amano is not afraid to make magic look like something you could touch if you could see it. When the monk faces a guardian creature with great bird wings and a lion's head, the creature seems to inhabit a space we can imagine walking into-- a space of fairy tales.
The world of *Dream Hunters* is an ancient one of demons, beasts, and gods who wander the road ready to give you advice and beat you about the head with sticks if you're not listening closely enough. But I've read stories of quests and dragons and love. What strikes me with *Sandman: The Dream Hunters* is that this is how such stories should want to go: as you read it, you find yourself caught up in the emotion of the story. Gaiman not only convinces us a fox can fall in love with a monk and the monk with the fox, but he makes you feel the depth of each lovers' pain as they sacrifice in the name of that love. There's a simple, humble sacrifice the fox makes early on that just makes the reader ache with pain.
Gaiman also has a playful way of interjecting himself into his style-- suddenly he'll throw in a pith line that reminds us this is a modern writer adopting the old oral style. It gets a laugh, and also serves to lift us for a moment out of the story before dipping us back again. Sometimes the narrator even comes right out and tells us he's interpreting an older story. The narrator becomes a character, a man who has taken it upon himself to carry on tradition by telling his tale, but who has seen things centuries later and cannot help but be a different kind of storyteller. This is a sophisticated trick.
*Sandman: The Dream Hunters* is one of those stories that appear to writers like a god who wanders the road and beats us about the head with a stick. We're not listening. This is how to tell a story. With complexity hidden, so it all looks simple, and it all feels real, no matter how fantastic or foreign. Remember the phrase I vowed not use? I'll use it for this one, because *Sandman: The Dream Hunters* is a fairy tale, and fairy tales should be read over and over.
Instant classic.