In Review: The Dreaming: Waking Hours (2020-) #4

Synopsis: This month on Waking Hours. Ruin has traveled to Worlds’ End to seek help from the denizen of the Dreaming who set him free in the first place… unfortunately, Brute and Glob have followed him there-on the orders of Dream himself! And back in the Dreaming, Lindy has taken on the challenge of discovering who the “true” Shakespeare is, via a staging of the apocryphal play The Birth Of Merlyn. But when you tell a tale inside the Dreaming, it has a strange way of becoming very real indeed…

The Story

With time running out. Ruin and his friends hatch a plan to get him back into the dreaming. Meanwhile, Lindy puts on a production of ‘The Birth of Merlyn’ in the hopes that it will flush out the real William Shakespeare. Elsewhere in the dreaming Lord Dream continues his search for Ruin, but something is going wrong with his world. Lindy’s production is creating Fae folk and the veil between her dream experience and the world of the dreaming is thinning.

The Artwork

The artwork for Waking Hours has been outstanding thus far and continues to be so. Nick Robles pencil work is fantastic and is helped tremendously with Matt Lopes excellent colorwork. I loved the opening few panels where we see a heavily pregnant Lindy performing in the play. As someone who has done theatre arts in the past. I appreciated Robles interpretation of the stage from both the point of view of the actor as well as the people in the wings.

I also loved the work done with Ruin’s journey to A House named Worlds End where he is finally captured by Brute and Glob.

Overall

The Dreaming: Waking Hours continues to be a monthly treat. The story is lots of fun with some great twists and turns. In Lindy, we have a character who is easy to relate to as she tries to find the great almighty OZ. As in the real William Shakespeare. Lindy’s journey into Shakespeare’s world very much has the feeling of Alice going through the Looking Glass.

Overall. A fantastic book with some brilliant twists.