The Dreamers

Why I Picked It Up ##

I was going for a run on a beautiful trail on the Mystic River outside of Boston and needed a book. This was available, was on some 'best of' fantasy lists, and the summary looked good. Also I definitely do judge a book by its cover. All the time.

## What I Liked About It ##

It was kind of dreamy? It was slow and meandering and just really steady: there was no real tension or build-up. Which I'm going to complain about in the next session. But it also made the experience of reading it very consistent and reliable. It was a good running companion for that reason. Not to distracting or engrossing.

## What I Didn't Like About It ##

Well, there was no tension or rising action. No character development to speak of. I probably wouldn't be able to read a print version of this and enjoy it.

It was also extraordinarily poorly timed. It came out January 2019? Which is the last possible time you could release a book about the spread of a super contagious virus and have it be about pretty much nothing other than the spread of a super contagious virus. In 2022, the premise is not novel or interesting, because we have all been living it for the last two years.

Also the 'magical' bits of it, while probably the most interesting, came too little and too late in the story. They were delightful. And I wish there was a way for us to have enjoyed them throughout.

All that being said, I wouldn't be shocked if this gets made into a "Walking Dead" kind of survival horror show or movie. The sleepwalkers were most definitely zombies. And it had the exact same kind of fear of infection as a zombie flick. If there will be coronavirus survival horror movies, they will look like this.

## What I Want To Remember ##

Strange Matthew and Mei? Their relationship was interesting. Maybe I'm wrong though, and I only think they are interesting because they are kind of the main characters.

## Who I Would Recommend It To ##

Tough one! This won't sit well with most readers because its slow and not much happens. And also the whole premise is too mundane and ordinary now. And the fantasy bits come too late.

I could only recommend this to the kind of person who, for example, actually enjoyed the pages of scenic description in the lord of the rings books.

"Confusion is normal."

Walker's prose floated me into this story so smoothly it felt like I was one of the dreamers, yielding to the narrative like a sickness. There is so much mystery to savor in this novel. It may even get savored a bit too much.

The plot stretches thin in the middle and there seems no reason for the frugality. The narrative engine is so rich, she could have given the reader plenty more, and if plot were merely to serve some other overarching interest, well I didn't see enough evidence of that. The result was my panic about 80% through the novel when I realized just how much the ending would make or break this work. I can tell you I felt satisfied enough to give this a pretty good star rating (i.e., I didn't get mad at the author) but I'm not convinced she filled out this idea as well as she could have.

I wouldn't be so disappointed if I didn't think Karen Thompson Walker was an excellent writer. The narrative structuring is elegant and she is able to create a form of pastiche reporting that blends together really well, propelling the story forward without relying on the psychological motivations of a central character. It's a kind of sociological storytelling I am keenly interested in. The narrative form of our century, really.

Do I recommend this? Yes. There is enough here to haunt and delight. Do I wish it were longer? Perhaps she'll write a sequel.