I was in my early teens when I first read Sandman, and to say it left a mark on my development would be an understatement. For anyone of the same age and emotional state, Sandman was a defining piece of fiction, as important as Lord of the Rings. It helped understand so much of what I liked, felt, and loved.

Two decades later, its creator, Neil Gaiman, has revealed himself a monster, and his ugly shadow hangs over every minute of what was once a beautiful legacy. It feels like a betrayal, one that taints every good memory the series once held.

Which is why Sandman, the adaptation, is such a conflicted experience. This is a perfect adaptation of the material. Like Season 1, it understands the emotion, tone, and scope better than any other comic book adaptation. In terms of capturing the sensation of what it felt like to live through the original prose, Sandman is in the same league as Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

For me, it felt like reliving my teenage years, which in turn brought up some painful memories I wasn't ready to deal with. But that's the power of cinema. Each film is a time capsule meant to evoke a past experience. They help us understand the world.

In the second season, the story continues exactly where we last saw Dream of the Endless. After recapturing The Corinthian, Dream (Tom Sturridge) rebuilds his kingdom, which had gone into disarray during his long absence. Elsewhere, Dream's brother, Destiny (Adrian Lester), meets The Three Fates, the weavers of time, and calls for a gathering of all siblings. He has news which will set each of them on a path that will change all of Dreaming, though it remains unclear how.

Once more, Sandman weaves together an epic tale of love, loss, grief, regret, and change that plays out through centuries of nonlinear time. Dream is a wonderfully contradictory character, equally easy to hate and love, and Sturridge plays the part beautifully. He has a distant air about him that keeps everyone at arms length, though, strangely, we still want to get closer, even if just for a second.

Equally mesmerizing are Kirby and Mason Alexander Park as Death and Desire, respectively. Their parts are slightly larger here than in the original material, and both make the best of the expanded screen time.

If there's something to complain about, it's that Netflix has split the final season into two parts, with weeks between the beginning and end, for no apparent reason. Now, the first half feels truncated and concludes just as the story picks up. We'll get the second half by the end of July, so it's not a long wait, but it feels pointless nonetheless.

Then there's Gaiman, who according to the producers had little to no involvement in Season 2, yet it's inescapable that his hand can be felt everywhere. For some, that will be a deal breaker. The wound is still fresh. There's no question that his lyrical and epic storytelling is grand, which makes it so difficult to reconcile with all the rest. A part of me wants to enjoy this fully and give myself over to it without reservations as I could when I was a teenager. The other half of me rejects it outright.

If you don't have those reservations, you're bound to love Sandman all over again. By all rights, it's one of the best comic book adaptations ever made. A beautiful, haunting spectacle that deserves all the praise it gets. There's nothing quite like it, and in a better world it will attract an entire new generation of fans who will outgrow Gaiman and create works of equal beauty on their own.

For now, we have this, and for what it's worth, it is brilliant.