While Morpheus starred in the forefront in Preludes and Nocturnes, he takes a backseat in The Doll’s House. Here, mortals—the Walkers—fueled the story.

The Doll’s House treads on the similar path as Preludes and Nocturnes. In the first volume, Morpheus has to find important talismans; in the second volume Morpheus has to seek for dreams that have escaped his realm and morphed into human forms in the wake of the chaotic events in P&N. We get introduced to Rose Walker, a dream vortex that was fathered by an Endless. After the ninth issue, the adventure follows a decent story of manipulation, betrayal, friendship, and love.

“Tales in the Sand”, the prologue of sorts of this volume, discusses the fractured love story of Morpheus and Nada, the African queen who was mentioned in P&N as the lover whom Morpheus incarcerated in Hell for all eternity. We discover that Desire manipulated the two to fall into this messy affair. I loved the tragedy, even if in the hackneyed mortals-and-deities-are-never-meant-to-fall-in-love kind of way.

But what I really liked the most, strangely, is the Rose and Morpheus exchange about who’s manipulating who, which practically became the theme of this volume. Rose is half-Endless and half-human, and when she finds this out expresses her rage about these god-like beings treating mortals like playthings, or dolls. Morpheus responds by saying that the Endless are the anthropomorphic representations of concepts created by man, so it’s the other way around. It’s practically the whole tone of the story, the main driving force being Desire and his/her/its bad antic’s consequences.
This is a good follow-up to Preludes and Nocturnes. The twisted darkness is still there, writhing beneath the melancholic tone of the whole tome. I’m glad to see new characters as well, and I’m particularly amused by Hob Gadling. He’s the reason why our Morpheus has somehow shown a side of himself that could actually be akin to humanity. :D

All in all it’s an amazing read.