I do feel like this is a definite improvement on the first volume. The story is more of an ensemble piece with many layers whereas the first volume was just 'Morpheus goes to point A to get thing X from person M' and repeat. That being said, although I think the writing is overall better in this volume, it is also just really REALLY fucked up. The whole cereal convention thing definitely is a bit too much for me at times and also we still haven't really gotten into the aftermath of the whole Morpheus/Nada thing which is the main reason I can't quite bring myself to like him, even though he has objectively done far worse things. But I realized in the middle of reading this volume that just last week I was complaining that there were so few books with unlikable protagonists and here I am, complaining about how unlikable Dream is. So I'm going to try to embrace that because I think I'll have a much better time with this series if I do. Also, while I still don't think he's a particularly likable character, he is such a good example of how to write an immortal. Neil does such a great job with this and you can really feel how old he is and how little the passage of time actually affects him. As I said before, most authors seem to write immortals as acting like teenagers so it is actually really refreshing.