Dreamquake: Book Two of the Dreamhunter Duet by Elizabeth Knox
Dreamquake, the sequel to Dreamhunter, begins as a nightmare, literally. On St. Lazarus’s Eve, wealthy citizens gather at the Rainbow Opera for a traditional sharing of the Homecoming dream by dreamhunter, Grace Tiebold, and end up being buried alive! However, that part is in their minds, but chaos ensues as they wake from the nightmare bloodied and battered trying to break free from the coffin that someone has placed them into in their minds.
It is quickly realized that someone has overshadowed Grace’s transmission of a dream, but whom? And why? In Grace’s eyes, her niece Laura, a novice dreamhunter and her own daughter Rose’s best friend, is the apparent suspect. She’s upset at the disappearance of her father, Tziga, and has seemed very distant. She also was present that night at the Opera House. And now notes show up that take responsibility, but are signed by someone named Lazarus.
After the incident, all dreamhunters are gathered to be taken to the Place (where dreams come from) to overwrite the nightmare, and Rose sees Laura being secretly carried off by a sand creature with the word NOWN written across the back of his neck. She ends up at her Aunt Marta’s, but is quickly taken, per her aunt’s request, to the Temple, to be placed under the care of Father Roy and the Grand Patriarch, who “were always speaking out against dreamhunters and dream palaces.”
To Laura’s surprise, and joy, she is taken to meet her father, Tziga, who she believed to be dead. He had begun to question the Regulatory Body over his belief that they were regularly using nightmares on the convicts as punishment and\or incentive to follow the rules, work harder, etc, which he considered inhumane. Laura’s family reunites, as does Rose & Laura, and now they are determined to find out what is happening within the borders of the Place. And with Nown’s help, Laura discovers & gains evidence that camp has been set up Inside and missing dreamhunters and convicts are being used while in deep Contentment.
Laura narrowly returns to her family, and the entire family, with the help of her friend and now love, Sandy, returns to a seemingly normal existence as the Secretary of Interior fears that his secret will be revealed. The plan is to kidnap Sandy and use his dream powers against the others. But a thwarted plan leads to a devastating fire at the Presentation Ball, where Rose narrowly escapes with her life and Nown ends up falling into the depths of the fire while following Laura’s order to rescue Rose. And Sandy never makes it out (or does he?).
Determined now more than ever to reveal the evil plan of the Regulatory Body and Cas Doran, the Hames and Tiebolds work to override Contentment and reveal the truth to the Grand Patriarch and others. In fact, Aunt Marta is the one who finally makes it to Judge Seresin with the film and reveals Doran’s plan. “Cas Doran and his Regulatory Body have been loading captive dreamhunters with a dream that makes anyone who has it stupid and incautious with happiness. Doran has begun to use this dream to control people in the capital…So far he’s contrived to have a dream-narcotized Congress pass legislation to extend the presidential term. And he is hunting down and trying to eliminate, or permanently dream-drug, anyone he thinks will spoil his plans.” And while this is going on, Laura finally comes to the full realization that the Place is a Nown…something created by someone…that the dreams are only visions of the real future, and by discovering the one who created it, Lazarus Hame, the Place ceases to exist.
The story concludes with the family intact, Sandy returning as he had been dragged off to the Place, and the revelation that Sandy and Laura would have a son. Laura and Lazarus have married and have a daughter, and the act of dreamhunting no longer exists. I’m truly not sure about Lazarus, but feel he must have been Sandy & Laura’s son from the future…but now, as Laura declares, “God has given us a new world to live in – like the Gate. There is a first time for everything.”
As hooked as I became in the last third of this novel, I know I would have enjoyed it more if I’d read Dreamhunter. And it might have been helpful to realize before finishing the novel that a “Glossary” existed following the epilogue that would have made terms a little more clear. Interesting, puzzling…definitely a different world.
One Whole and Perfect Day by Judith Clarke
This novel teaches all of us that no matter who we come in contact with during our lives, we should treat them with respect and decency because you never know when they may reappear in your life. This novel definitely brings the phenomenon of 6 degrees to life. The main character is Lily Samson, a typical high school student, here older brother Lonnie, who is always starting projects but never finishing, her mother, Dr. Marigold Samson, who runs a day care center for elders, and her two grandparents, May and Stanley. Other characters that play an important role in the story are Clara, her mother Rose and her father as well as Mrs. Nightingale. Lily is considered the sensible family member who is always trying to keep everything in order. Each member of the family has some personal struggle they must overcome and as they find the answers to their struggle they end up back to where it all began –with family. Grandpa and Lonnie have a huge argument and Lonnie is basically kicked out of the family, so he moves away to live in a boarding house where he takes a course in college on writing and meets Clara, who ends up being his girlfriend. Lonnie struggles with
White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean
Sym, a 14 year old girl fixated on the unknown continent of Antarctica and an explorer who met his fate there some 90 years earlier, goes on a journey with her favorite “Uncle Victor” (her father’s business partner & best friend) and has no idea that the love of the explorer, Titus Oates, will be the very thing that saves her.
The novel begins with an awkward teen trying to make sense of her world after losing her father, who she felt never loved her anyway, and dealing with personal struggles, like her significant loss of hearing and her inability to communicate well. As Sym herself puts it, “I don’t know if I’m stupid. I might as well be. When I open my mouth, nothing intelligent comes out. Inside my head I’m as articulate as anything, look. But try to get a thought out and it’s like pushing raw potatoes through a sieve.” However, Uncle Victor always comes to the rescue; the one who has always believed in her and who has always given her something that no else ever has; the dream of Antarctica. And since her father’s death, she has created a world of her own with the knowledge that her uncle has poured into her about this bleak wilderness and the relationship she has built in her mind with this secret confidant, Captain Oates.
When Uncle Victor decides to take Sym on a vacation to Paris, and Mum has lost her passport, it’s just the two of them. To her surprise, her “uncle” has even bigger plans for them: an expedition of their own, with a few chosen Pengwing travelers, fulfilling her dearest wish to travel south to Antarctica! After meeting up with the strange bunch, including a journalist, a would-be author, a bird enthusiast, and a father and son from Norway, they finally arrive in the great white expanse. And this is where the true expedition is revealed: the search for Symmes’s Hole, “the entrance to a hollow planet,” “worlds within worlds,” and from what Uncle Victor has emphatically decided, “inhabited.”
The journey continues after many of the travelers mysteriously become ill and the plane that makes daily visits with food and communication from the outside world blows up. Even when the film crew that Manfred Bruch, the Norwegian, has promised to document Uncle Victor’s discovery doesn’t arrive, Victor is insistent that he, Sym, Bruch and his teenage son, Sigurd, continue on the journey to this “geographical soft spot, like that hole in a newborn baby’s head.” And for Sym, a new possibility urged her on. Could Titus possibly be alive and well since his body was never discovered after that fateful Polar Expedition over 90 years ago?
However, what Sym sadly discovers over time is that her Uncle Victor, this self-absorbed, obsessed man is the reason for all of the difficulties she’s faced; the death of her father and his seeming lack of love for his daughter; her hearing loss (created by the treatments he gave her as a child to build up her immunities to help repopulate the underground world with our sweet Sigurd); the sickness (and even death) of fellow travelers; and her impending doom as they have no ability or resources to return to civilization after setting out on the trek for the new world. Why should they? They would never have to return anyway. And to continue to the disappointment, the young man who has now touched her heart in a way that only Titus has before is a con, along with the man claiming to be his father. They were in it for the money that Uncle Victor promised, and now Manfred has lost his life after Victor’s discovery, and Sigurd has run off with the only means of getting them back to civilization.
In the end, Victor’s discovery is only that it’s a deep drop to death inside the massive ice of the Antarctic. And the only gleam of hope is that by a chance miracle, and Titus’ voice insisting that she push on, Sym happens upon the broken-down transport with a scared Sigurd fighting to stay warm and alive. And when a chance sighting of a sled somersaulting over the ice by a plane leads to their rescue, Sym realizes that life will continue now that she can see it truly for the first time.
This novel is a page-turner, and one that I didn’t want to put down. What begins as something from the science-fiction shelves turns into realistic fiction that makes you ask at the end about the life that Sym can now lead. And finally, is Titus truly a figment of her imagination? That discovery will be left to the reader.
Sym, a 14 year old girl fixated on the unknown continent of Antarctica and an explorer who met his fate there some 90 years earlier, goes on a journey with her favorite “Uncle Victor” (her father’s business partner & best friend) and has no idea that the love of the explorer, Titus Oates, will be the very thing that saves her.
The novel begins with an awkward teen trying to make sense of her world after losing her father, who she felt never loved her anyway, and dealing with personal struggles, like her significant loss of hearing and her inability to communicate well. As Sym herself puts it, “I don’t know if I’m stupid. I might as well be. When I open my mouth, nothing intelligent comes out. Inside my head I’m as articulate as anything, look. But try to get a thought out and it’s like pushing raw potatoes through a sieve.” However, Uncle Victor always comes to the rescue; the one who has always believed in her and who has always given her something that no else ever has; the dream of Antarctica. And since her father’s death, she has created a world of her own with the knowledge that her uncle has poured into her about this bleak wilderness and the relationship she has built in her mind with this secret confidant, Captain Oates.
When Uncle Victor decides to take Sym on a vacation to Paris, and Mum has lost her passport, it’s just the two of them. To her surprise, her “uncle” has even bigger plans for them: an expedition of their own, with a few chosen Pengwing travelers, fulfilling her dearest wish to travel south to Antarctica! After meeting up with the strange bunch, including a journalist, a would-be author, a bird enthusiast, and a father and son from Norway, they finally arrive in the great white expanse. And this is where the true expedition is revealed: the search for Symmes’s Hole, “the entrance to a hollow planet,” “worlds within worlds,” and from what Uncle Victor has emphatically decided, “inhabited.”
The journey continues after many of the travelers mysteriously become ill and the plane that makes daily visits with food and communication from the outside world blows up. Even when the film crew that Manfred Bruch, the Norwegian, has promised to document Uncle Victor’s discovery doesn’t arrive, Victor is insistent that he, Sym, Bruch and his teenage son, Sigurd, continue on the journey to this “geographical soft spot, like that hole in a newborn baby’s head.” And for Sym, a new possibility urged her on. Could Titus possibly be alive and well since his body was never discovered after that fateful Polar Expedition over 90 years ago?
However, what Sym sadly discovers over time is that her Uncle Victor, this self-absorbed, obsessed man is the reason for all of the difficulties she’s faced; the death of her father and his seeming lack of love for his daughter; her hearing loss (created by the treatments he gave her as a child to build up her immunities to help repopulate the underground world with our sweet Sigurd); the sickness (and even death) of fellow travelers; and her impending doom as they have no ability or resources to return to civilization after setting out on the trek for the new world. Why should they? They would never have to return anyway. And to continue to the disappointment, the young man who has now touched her heart in a way that only Titus has before is a con, along with the man claiming to be his father. They were in it for the money that Uncle Victor promised, and now Manfred has lost his life after Victor’s discovery, and Sigurd has run off with the only means of getting them back to civilization.
In the end, Victor’s discovery is only that it’s a deep drop to death inside the massive ice of the Antarctic. And the only gleam of hope is that by a chance miracle, and Titus’ voice insisting that she push on, Sym happens upon the broken-down transport with a scared Sigurd fighting to stay warm and alive. And when a chance sighting of a sled somersaulting over the ice by a plane leads to their rescue, Sym realizes that life will continue now that she can see it truly for the first time.
This novel is a page-turner, and one that I didn’t want to put down. What begins as something from the science-fiction shelves turns into realistic fiction that makes you ask at the end about the life that Sym can now lead. And finally, is Titus truly a figment of her imagination? That discovery will be left to the reader.
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