I loved this new Locke & Key collection, this time looking at a previous generation of the Locke family in the early twentieth century. These Lockes use, and make, the keys much more casually than the modern Lockes re-discovering their power, but the consequences of doing so are just as dire.

 

The first few stories are good, but it’s the final cross-over into Neil Gaiman’s world of The Sandman that makes this book excel. In the hunt to free the soul of a Locke from hell we meet Dream, trapped in the Burgess basement as we first see him in The Sandman books, Cain and Abel, Lucien, Corinthian, Fiddler’s Green and even Lucifer Morningstar. It’s awesome. The power of the keys versus the powers of Hell and the dreaming make for a perfect combination. You don’t have to have read The Sandman series for the cross-over to make sense, but it also works as a great prequel to that series and another reason to go on and read it if you haven’t yet had the pleasure.