Reviews for Dreamquake (Dreamhunter Duet Series #2)

The average rating for Dreamquake (Dreamhunter Duet Series #2) based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-16 00:00:00 Paul Wiersma I would have written a disappointed if (okay, trying to be fair) optimistic review of Dreamhunter: book one if I hadn't finished Dreamquake: book two first. It wasn't over yet and could still have emotional weight. I'm harder on the series than I would have been if the potential hadn't been there to be good, and if the second book didn't piss me off so very much. Why should I care if I'd been duped into reading yet another tomb of how great insipid fifteen year old girls are? And the many men who love them? Sooooobs. Why me? Why is this my life? Time travel books should have warning labels on them so that I don't expect them to not perform unimpressive feats of cop-outness. As for the teen girls I should know better by now. That there will be pointless descriptions of never to be seen again men admiring their attractiveness is a given. Okay, I'm turning into a picky little moaning pissant. My ex told me plenty of times that it was unfair for me to expect everything to be as great as The Wire. I don't think I'm unfair. If you are going to write a story you should at least know who the people are and what the hell you are trying to say in the first place. Why else would you write at all? (Nooooo, don't tell me that there are those who write for money! Or that it is okay to be mediocre and have good ideas and short change them for easiness! la la la I've never heard of Law and Order la la la.) I'd have said it was good, could have been great if the gaze wasn't too outward on asethetic details than emotional ones. I cared more about the toll the land took on those who lived there than the lay of the land. It read like the point got lost somewhere in the getting to know yous. It could have been a hell of a story if the interest had been emotional... Alright! I wouldn't have said those other things. I would have said it had more in common with Being John Malkovich being inside someone else's head than Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind living and reliving memories, willfully lying to ourselves and how much it HURTS to feel. BJM was impressive and different. It didn't make me think about what it was like to be someone else (I'm even less interested in nature of celebrity stories [pretend I'm the average bear and haven't known more about Malkovich than most bears for a long ass time. Because he's cool! Not famous]). BJM = impressively original and cold. Eternal Sunshine is my definition for impressively original and warm and sad and real. When I began Dreamhunter I was really intrigued by the differentness. I said to myself that it wasn't like anything I'd ever read before. The more that I read the more I began to get impatient that I wasn't getting any further. (The more that I read the more that I began to think about parts from other stories as well. It's also a bit like Prisoner of Azkaban, the third in the Harry Potter series. Intriguing, underdeveloped parts from other stories. What about the inmates who can't escape even inside their own brains? Oops, this isn't that story either! There are similarities to Sabriel by Garth Nix, as well, namely the whole daddy's girl on a mission in an otherworldly place thing.) Then I read Dreamquake: book two. Different and... Backwards. Retcon. Retcon in ways that I wouldn't have dreamed (heh) were possible. Screwed all the usual retcon holes and then tore all new ones? Something like that. The lay of the land didn't matter! It mattered EVEN less who the people were. The point that got lost wasn't a point anymore, didn't matter at all in fact. The point was a testament to the supposed god-given greatness of an insipid fifteen year old girl. Nooooooooooooooo! Not again!!!!! Much more than wanting to know why there was a place like The Place, where Dreamhunters chase dreams to share with others, I wanted to feel how this life changed the people it touched. No, not glamour of making money and being famous (as the parents of Laura and Rose do). (if you think the second book will answer why some people can go in and others cannot... Nope! That didn't matter any more in book two.) The government seizing control of the dreams for their own use was... well, I already named the Harry Potter series. This is handled, in the end, with about as much believability as house elf rights in Harry Potter (yay we're all free and everything is better now! Human nature changed for good! Squeee let's have chocolate frogs). It should have mattered more, should have mattered how they got that way. The only one who mattered was Laura and that negated the first book entirely. That negated the reason for a book since Laura wasn't a character at all... There are many good things about the books and many other things (I don't even know where to start listing the fatal flaws of these two books!) sooo wrong that I'm annoyed. I sound like I hated this more than I did. It's that after taste feeling when you go back and wish you did things differently and maybe feel queasy like what the hell did I do last night? I had cared! Then... What the? The protagonist is a cipher to get around answering any of the interesting implications that the story suggests. Picture someone who has total faith in God - not faith from experience but faith they are born with from in-born MAGICAL ABILITIES- and that's our heroine Laura. Not a God that touches the world, or anyone in it. I was at a loss where it came from. It would have been different if it had come from anywhere. Well, it should have come from something deserved. I can have faith if they believe it from something other than saying it is so. I wish. What the fuck, Knox, what the fuck. It is a lazy storytelling advice to get around answering any of the tough questions. God wants it to be so. I'm supposed to have that. It's all about me. You don't get to say they are born this way and then live the same way, not touching anything! At first I was impressed that Laura was not perfect, that she was afraid to make decisions. She's not a Mary Sue (at least not in my eyes) because she's such an infant. Only she can DO everything when the plot needs her to, and the plot is moved on and on and on because Laura can do everything Knox needs her to do. No implications, no questions. That was what was supposed to happen. I had questions. The world revolves around Laura. That was one of the biggest mistakes Knox made. Why create a world for one person? I say biggest mistakes. It's more like a fatal flaw. Unlike other reviewers of Dreamquake, I LIKED that the books switched perspectives, even to the so-called questionable people. That did give me false hope that anyone else was going to matter. (I'm bitter!) This is a new world, right? Are we supposed to know that the Dreamhunters are bad, the regulatory board evil? It shouldn't have been clear cut and dried. It would have been a different book if it hadn't been (a better book!). What about the church who are against both? Sighs. She doesn't have to decide anything because it is taken out of her hands when something she believed proved her fate to be one thing isn't true, she can live her life again. Not because she EARNED anything by being a REAL character, made any decisions ever (her only defining characteristic from book one is that she never makes decisions for herself) or earned anything that wasn't given to her by birth right. What the fuck?!!!! THIS is your story? THIS?! All of this happened for this? Are you fucking kidding me? (I could go on about all of the times she was carried in her sandman's arms, or how she fell in love instantly with both her men. But these things are common occurrences in young adult lit these days...) I just wanted her to do something because she felt it was the right thing to do because she cared about the consequences. Not because her daddy told her to do it, or because she "knew" that God wanted her to do it, or "something" spoke to her. Because LAURA wanted it. Is that too much to ask? Why create a person who doesn't exist in any sense? (To me that means giving a shit.) 　 Laura is a terrorist (I'll say it because that's exactly what she was in the end of book one) because once people know what is going on they'll stop it? They don't. The bad guys are only prevented from using dreams to mind control everyone into obedience by Laura's inherited magical abilities and spoilerific and no less inherited before the books begin situation. Just because kind of a thing. A what was the point of reading about this then kind of a thing. Then in the epilogue the prisoners are no longer forced to do manual labor. (They are after thoughts. Isn't it neat when the reason for a great cause is reduced to an after thought?) People woke up and cared about people 'cause that's what people do? Um... It wasn't lost on me that their land is based on 19th century New Zealand. Australia of today locks up illegal immigrants in prison, as does the usa. Countries founded on prisoners and runaways. What the hell is memory of a people, of what was went through? Since when does getting the word out change for the good? After book one they don't hear that the inmates are suffering, just that they get the mining jobs! Now the epilogue? Yeah, prisons used to be worse. Would anyone want to be in a mental asylum now? Even if it isn't like in Victorian England? (Or from the 1950s in the Usa.) It's not hopeless to change things (you have to keep fighting to keep them from sliding back) but in no way do I swallow that getting rid of one method of subduing people for power is the end. No way. How did they wind up with those kinds of powers in the first place? There should have been more about those minds that didn't want to listen in the first place, not that the voice they listened to was taken away. Laura's cousin Rose said they should help the inmates because it was right, not because God loved them. I trust Rose more. What if someone heard a voice telling them that God DIDN'T love them. No, resemblance to real life is not good enough. WHY did these people want to live in dreams? What about the stories, films and poems they also had? People in real life have those things. I want to believe they teach empathy just as the news could (doesn't?). Why did Laura do what her father told her to do (and only because her father told her to do it, though he reneges in book two because book one no longer matters, apparently) and force the nightmare meant for prisoners on unsuspecting dreamers? (That her aunt was very nearly blamed and could have been imprisoned does not occur to Laura. I don't think she would have cared if it had. She was doing what was best! Vomits.) Why did people live like that, hunting for dreams and living to stay awake to pass on dreams to others? Wouldn't people, I don't know, THINK or feel things about what it is like to be someone else? Why were there split dreams that offered different perspectives from the same dream? (Too bad the dreams were all part of a time travel plot that was all about Laura's god-given birth rights.) Did the culture gossip, feel connected to each other for sharing these things? Did they forget what it was like when the dream was over? Then why did some dreams become traditions? Why were others mistrustful of the dreams? Why did it all have to be a message for Laura? Why did Knox create this whole damned world for this one girl who didn't develop or change or move at all? The ending of her Sandman starts all over again, back to the beginning, as any time travel story would. It's a loop right? Circles aren't progress? Does that mean you don't feel anything? Isn't being born and then dying a timeline with a definite outcome too? One fucking spot and never moving is more like it. Ugh! You know the ending of Eternal Sunshine when Joel and Clementine are running through the snow? And it loops continuously? It could either mean that they are back together or it is another memory. I liked that ending a lot. It could mean that it mattered because it HAPPENED and no memory erasing could ever kill it for good. Or it could just mean that it was over and the memory was all that was left and they were both alone (assuming Clementine didn't meet any other "nice" guys). Emotional shit matters to me in stories (always). I like the new ideas of erasing memories and people getting rid of relationships. I liked even better they analyzed the ramifications of getting rid of your own life. What matters so much you can't erase it. Right? Loops aren't dead either. The point is you make your own world and you can make it better or worse by what you make with it. It isn't made if it is handed to you. So what the hell did these people dream other people's dreams instead of their own for? It made them feel more alive and they felt good? (If they didn't get a nightmare.) The people sold it for money but they could get money in other ways that didn't require walking through wasteland of "another world" without sleep and getting addicted to drugs that kept them from sleeping. Benefits and costs. There was more to it than that. What did that say about those people? They didn't want to think for themselves? Laura definitely did not want to think for herself. So what about that? Why did you put all of that stuff out there and then get rid of it, Elizabeth Knox? You can't distract me with romance and time travel twists and fancy new(ish) worlds. You don't get to renege and have Tgiza say he was out of his mind in book two when you want to drop a plot twist. Why did he torment prisoners with nightmares and then want everyone to share it, through his daughter? Why did he abandon his daughter her whole life (oh yeah, because he was dreaming it away!)? Why did Laura drift through life and then decide on a meaningless purpose of god? (Just because people do kill in the name of god is not good enough. YOUR story. You should know.) Give it meaning or you don't get to name it. Cop out. 　 P.s. My fantasy shelf title "asleepanddreaming" and my youngadult shelf "thelostgirls" worked so very well for these two books too. Sob!

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-10 00:00:00 Linda Miller WARNING, THIS REVIEW IS FOR BOTH BOOKS IN THE DUET. Part 1: The Spoiler-Free Review Ana's Take: Dreamhunter and Dreamquake are the two Fantasy novels that form the Dreamhunter Duet - they have been originally published separately but are effectively one story in two parts, hence this combined review. The two books were actually published in Australia as one omnibus edition called The Invisible Road. The Dreamhunter Duet is set Southland, an alternate version of a New Zealand that has been colonised by 5 migrating families (some of them descended from Bible's Lazarus). It features a story about families, about cousins, about lovers, and about friends. It is also a story about power and politics and dreams. Above all, it is a story about a place. The Place. The Place is a fantastical realm that appeared suddenly a few years back and where a few specific people (dreamhunters) can travel into to capture dreams. In terms of worldbuilding, there is a whole industry that has been built around The Place: dreamhunters capture dreams and then broadcast them to a paying, sleeping audience that gets to live through amazing experiences . In Southland's capital, the most famous broadcasting place is the Rainbow Opera where the biggest names in dreamhunting can make a fortune. But it all goes much beyond that: Dreamhunting also affects the future generations of this nation because young people dream of becoming hunters (so that they can improve their lives) and there are also questions of politics, economic progress, fame and fortune connected to The Place and its different uses (most of them benign, some of them horrifyingly nightmarish). Two of the most famous, most powerful Dreamhunter families are the Tiebolds and the Hames. Cousins-almost-sisters Rose Tiebold and Laura Hame are reaching the age where teenagers can try out dreamhunting and whereas Rose dreams about it and has built her entire life around it, Laura dreads the moment. Surprisingly, it is Laura who succeeds in becoming a Dreamhunter. The story follows the two girls as they deal with disappointments and successes and the narrative follows the two as well as the other members of their family. The overarching plot deals with a recurring dream that Laura's father Tziga has and the mysterious uses he makes of it - all connected with a political plot. And this is only but the barest bones of the duet. I devoured it like there wasn't tomorrow a few months ago and although I admit that the details are now slightly fuzzy, the overwhelming impression I still carry with me is how this was simultaneously uniquely remarkable and horrifyingly problematic. There is a LOT to unpack here: I think overall, in terms of worldbuilding, it is a remarkable fantasy and I have not read anything quite like it before. Everything in book 1 (and the vast majority of book 2) just blew my mind away in terms of the concept of the dreamhunting, the details of the world constructed around it, the combination with Judeo mythology (the early families who settled there, the Hame's ability to create Golems ), the two girls' friendship, how thematically speaking it all centres around free will and decision-making. I loved that the novel is constantly changing viewpoints and that we get to spend time with the adults and see their relationship with each other. I enjoyed the sweet romance between Laura and the young Sandy and above all I LOVED Rose, her forthrightness and the way she struggles to find meaning in the life that she has to build after her dreams of dreamhunting have been destroyed. I also loved the way that gender roles are played and how Laura's uncle (Rose's father) is the central maternal figure of the story, for example. There is so much that is interesting and engaging with the topics of politics, power, family dynamics, gender roles, identity in these books. It all sounds awesome, right? BUT. The revelations at the end of the book and the ultimate resolution ruined the whole thing for me - my reaction is a blend of EXTREME personal dislike (I did not care for how things ended for the two girls and I had problems with a certain "vibe" I found in the narrative) and my questioning of the overall arc and general worldbuilding that make no sense after the final twist is revealed. More about those in the discussion in the second part of this review. I just wanted to end my part by saying this: I thought reading this was well worth it for the family dynamics and the impressive imagery. Despite my personal aversion for how things ended up, I still do not regret reading it. (In other words: these are the most amazing books I have ever hated. Or the most fucked up books I have ever loved. Or something.) Thea's Take: I am both grateful and appalled that Ana put these books into my hands after reading them. I am grateful, because as Ana says, the Dreamhunter Duology is mindblowingly amazing when it comes to worldbuilding, basic premise, writing style, and imagination. The concept of The Place - a mysterious land to which only a select few can travel, and even more select few can capture and rebroadcast dreams - is fascinating. The idea of "dreamhunting" itself and the commercialization and institutionalization of certain dreams is also unique and freaking fantastic. The Place and Dreams are a mystery, and I love the questions posed especially by the first book. Why are dreams tied to certain locations? Why do they feature certain central figures (convicts, in particular)? What do the dreams mean and where are they coming from? Beyond the outstanding premise and world, I also loved the female characters in the duology, especially Rose (Laura…well, more on that in the spoiler section). Even though this is an alternate world set in the early 1900s, I love that Rose, her powerful dreamhunter mother, and even at certain points Laura (but really, more on that in a bit) are women that have agency and are empowered and make their own decisions - be it with friends, having sex for the first time, surviving a fire, and so on. I love the threads of friendship and of family in both of these books, especially when it comes to cousin Rose and her relationship with both her mother and cousin (who is really like a sister) Laura. ALL THAT SAID - I agree with Ana in that there are some major, un-overlook-able problems with the book. I personally did not care for the ending - scratch that. I personally hated the ending of the book. While everything is nicely resolved and all the questions are answered (about dreams, The Place, Laura's EXTRA SPECIAL SPECIALNESS), I resented the resolution and its implications. I hated the way that the girls' storylines are tied up; I especially abhorred the romantic elements to this story so far as Rose and Laura are concerned. Especially Laura (whose character is basically ruined for me completely). Finally, this also bothers me deeply: the fact that this takes place in a kinda-sorta version of New Zealand, but a New Zealand that has been completely erased of its Maori population and history (more on that below). Ultimately, I am torn when it comes to this duology. It's undeniably brilliant, with an imaginative scope that is off the charts. It's also incredibly infuriating, and left me feeling both creeped out and ripped off. Do I recommend it? Yes, because it is a duology that SHOULD be read, dissected, appreciated, and debated. (In other words: I understand why Ana told me to read these books - because this is the type of thing that needs to be discussed. With spoilers. Below.) Part 2: Book Discussion with ALL THE SPOILERS **READER BEWARE! Spoilers follow below. If you have not read the duology and do not wish to be spoiled, LOOK AWAY** After Thea finished the books, both of us frantically sent a flurry of emails back and forth and have condensed all our feelings into the following few key points. Ready? 1. It is revealed that the Place was created by Lazarus Hame, the future son of Laura and Sandy. This Future!Lazarus! has a terrible life and so he buries himself alive and accidentally creates a living thing - THE PLACE! - which broadcasts his dreams from the future into the past as an attempt to communicate with other Hames so they can… help him. Survive. Because The Place is a NOWN, and NOWN is required to protect Laura Hame and all those she cares for NO MATTER WHAT. We both loved this (TIME TRAVEL! THE PLACE IS A SAND GOLEM!) and hated this (it is all about Laura and Sandy and their son and Laura's innate greatness and goodness???!!!!!! WHYYYYYYYYY! What a waste of a perfectly good premise!). (Not to mention, OF COURSE after Laura has sex with Sandy, he supposedly dies and then Laura discovers she is pregnant. This is one of our most irritating pet peeves in literature. NO.) 2. This creates a HUGE worldbuilding problem. If this is all about the Hame family and very specifically about their ability to create golems and shape clay/sand/dust/ash/food items into living things, HOW AND WHY can other people (non-Hames) become Dreamhunters and Rangers? How can they enter The Place at all? What about the other dreams (the Gate dream comes to mind)? There's also the problem of paradoxes and fractured timelines. When Lazarus rises from the grave - where he has been buried alive but not dead for years and years - he is alive. And yet, his memories of his past are intrinsically tied to the existence of The Place in his childhood and his upbringing with his single mother (who is no longer a single mother). There's a "many worlds" explanation that would allow this to work, but it feels a bit like a cheap cop-out. 3. In the end, the two extremely young female protagonists end up the book married and with children. Laura finds Lazarus and saves him and then learns that he is her son. This happens exactly at the point at which she realises she is pregnant with her supposedly dead boyfriend's baby. But because she KNOWS Lazarus, she has no choice but to keep the baby. Our feelings about this are complicated: do we accept this as Laura's CHOICE or do we think this is not a "choice" at all because it was imposed on her by the plot? Laura is also effectively stripped of ANY agency because she acts on things that she is TOLD to do by her father, by her family, and even by fate itself. The whole history of this world and the entire plot hinges on young Laura having baby Lazarus. It is the end-all and the origin of the whole story. (Except for the fact that this Lazarus is from an alternate timeline and might not matter at all if Laura keeps the baby?) Meanwhile, Rose marries Future!Lazarus! who is her cousin (we can even say that it is almost her nephew if you think how close she and Laura are, like sisters!!!) who is also a MUCH older man. Rose and her husband (Future!Lazarus!) live together with their daughter as well as Laura, Sandy and Baby!Lazarus!, whom Rose helps raise. It's so fucked up we can't even, especially considering the next point: 4. In the beginning of book Laura, in the footsteps of her father, creates a Golem, called NOWN. The relationship between Laura and NOWN is SO SO CREEPY. The creative impulse behind Laura's creation of NOWN (and then giving him his free will) is undeniably because of her desire for a father figure to take care of her following Tziga - her real father - and his disappearance. She creates NOWN to make decisions for her and to love her like a father tending a child… and more. There is DEFINITELY a sexual vibe between Laura and NOWN, with her need for NOWN to "cherish" her and love her in a very un-fatherly kind of way. Basically, the duology as a whole has a really weird, really pervasive incestuous vibe going on that is never questioned at all. 5. Finally, a point that we find DEEPLY, INTENSELY problematic: erasing people from history. The story takes place in an alternate history New Zealand-inspired location. BUT in this world, there are no natives to New Zealand at all. The island was colonized by the five migrating families who arrive to find the island empty…and that's it. So BASICALLY the Maori - the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, who made their way to the islands in 1250-1300 CE - have been ERASED FROM HISTORY. *forever weeping* And that is all we have to say about that.