Reviews and Comments

I have just finished the first story called The Sea Dreams It Is The Sky. It's about this young literature lecturer in Spain, she is originally from a fictional country in Latin America called 'Magera'. Magera is under a dictatorship, and her parents were among those who have been 'disappeared'. While out one day, she meets this older man who it turns out is the missing Mageran poet Avendaño. From there, a series of events leads her back to Magera in order to deal with the tragic history of her country and her own past.

First off, the plot rings close to home because I am from the Philippines, where we also had/have the phenomenon of 'desaparecidos'. Thousands of people - students, activists, civic leaders, ordinary citizens were disappeared by agents of the state bent on fighting the supposed scourge of communism. This had its heyday in the 70s and 80s during the Marcos dictatorship, but this pattern of 'enforced disappearances' has continued in the succeeding administrations up to the current one under Duterte.

The integration of the supernatural with the mundane, as well as the quality of the prose reminds me of Clive Barker's works. Surprisingly, I did not expect how good the action/fight scenes would be. I feel like this novella would make for a really good movie. Overall, it is a tightly-written supernatural tale against the backdrop of a horrific political reality.

I feel that the quotes I encountered from the book beforehand were from a story that was more compelling than the one I actually read.

The prose at its best is incredible, at its worst wordy. It does verge I think towards the purple, but when it hits, it hits hard. "It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core." The sheer imagery in that, the whole psychology and emotions expressed. Conrad has a gift for crafting psychological images.

Marlow carries the story on his back. Kurtz could have been more interesting, but I don't know, I like Marlow better.

I think I would have liked a series of stories where it's just Marlow telling all his experiences as a sailor. Like Moby Dick, but only focused on the sailor as the world transitioned from the age of sails to that of steam. Descriptions of the hierarchy within vessels, types of ships, shipping routes, how a steamboat operates, how they measure distances, what different places were like ... etc.