Dreams & Dead Ends The American Gangster Film Book

This is a good book. How good, you ask? After reading the first few chapters, I set the book aside and e-mailed Vera Nazarian, asking if she would consider writing a Compass Rose story for an anthology I was editing for DAW.

This isn't a traditionally structured novel which moves from A to B to C. Rather, it moves from Z to G to 16, then comes back to B and C. All of the stories are set in the richly developed world of the Compass Rose, and all of the stories do interweave to tell a larger story, though you don't see the fullness of the story until the very last page.

When you finish reading, you want to flip back to the first page and start over again. This is not only a book that can be read twice; it demands it, and it rewards you for doing so.

Vera's worldbuilding and description are like a really good chocolate mousse: so rich it's almost too sweet, but so good you want more. And the mythological feel of the world feels real and true. Here's a quick example:

A spurting fountain of hueless water began to pulse from her vein, and she offered it to the queen.

"Take my Water and drink, for even Ris drank once from my wrist. For that act of quenching, Ris has given me Water in exchange for my mortal blood."

Maybe it's just me, but the depth of those two little paragraphs blew me away. And the whole book is like that, building a mythology, an entire world with a deep, genuine sense of history.

Because it took me a while to read this one, I sometimes lost track of characters as they disappeared and reappeared in the narrative. If you're into plot-heavy, fast-paced books, this may not be the one for you.

Bottom line: Vera's a good writer. I've read her book Lords of Rainbow, and it was good. Dreams of the Compass Rose is great. Go buy them.