The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters [Paperback]

Those reviewers who have slammed this novel based on their reading of one or three chapters really shouldn't be posting reviews here at all. This is a book of almmost 800 pages, and it moves at a fairly leisurely pace. The writing could be better (and could have been improved by professional editing), but the concept is so bizarre, the setting is so surreal, the characters are so odd (yet believable), that you would be missing a marvellous one-off tale by taking those one-star reviews too seriously.

One of the problems is the book's structure. Each of the first 3 chapters tells a lengthy part of the narrative from the point of view of a different character. These 3 characters don't meet up till chapter 4, and even then are soon separated again. But once we see them as a unit and begin to understand the forces they are fighting against, none of that matters. Dahlquist's imagination is disturbing, but I found the world he creates much more engaging than, say, Philip Pullman's second-hand universes. If you start to get sucked into this world--19th century, yet not 19th century, England, yet not England--you will start to find it hard to put down. You crave to know the truth behind the narrative. The prose style, though it needs work, is, on the whole, easy to follow. It has little elegance and quite a few errors ('off of' repeatedly, for example), but that doesn't get in the way of the narrative as it does in, say, Kate Mosse's very clumsily written bestseller Labyrinth. This story leaves you with a sense of strangeness that few others achieve. Read it for that alone.

Miss Temple - a spunky heroine with a perfectly charming pair of green ankle boots and a great curiosity to discover why her fiance has thrown her over.

Cardinal Chang - neither religious nor oriental, but he'll send you to your god for the price of a cup of chocolate.

Dr Abelard Svenson - long-suffering, chain-smoking physician and reluctant nurse-maid to a whoremongering rake of a German prince.

Three characters who find themselves enmeshed in a singular plot that threatens the morality of the civilized world...

At nearly 800 pages, this is a true leviathan of a novel, and it's the first of three. There is a tortuous, meandering plot which has barely revealed itself by the end of the first third of the book, salted with liberal flashbacks and changes of point of view, all couched in a densely verbose and frequently redundant prose. Worse still is the host of secondary characters, many of whom are either not named when they are first met or not revealed when they are first named. This is a difficult read, requiring some considerable concentration and I found myself having to skip back and re-read several pages or even chapters to try and remind myself of who's who, who's doing what to who and why. But then, it IS gothic; there is nothing spare or cut down about this story.

Nevertheless it is certainly a compelling and, yes, enjoyable book - if you persist. After the first cycle of three chapters, the plot DOES begin to reveal and what appeared to be an impenetrable mystery DOES become much clearer. The tempo picks up and the excitement builds. The characters are interesting and engaging. Miss Temple comes into her own as an indomitable, and tiny, whirlwind of straight(ish)-laced womanhood in "her" second chapter as she marshalls her forces against the sinister cabal. The good Kapitan Doktor Svenson is revealed as a (reluctant) man of action and Cardinal Chang shows his honourable nature. The story is thrilling and genuinely unpudownable; imagine (as the blurb suggests) a good Sherlock Holmes mystery, writ large and with the added spice of a bit of erotic naughtiness to tantalise the reader into turning the next page. This latter element is well billed in the blurb, but don't go expecting to much. Don't go (as did I!) flicking forward to find the rude bits because they are few and far between and not as naughty as you might expect.

Not a book for reading while waiting for a train (or waiting for the train to reach your station) - you may or may not miss your stop but you will certainly lose the thread. Give the book the attention it deserves - a quite evening in front of a roaring fire, or tucked under your duvet - and it will repay you with many lost hours avoiding (or stalking) the Comte d'Orcancz's henchmen over the city's rooftops, frequenting bordellos and coffee houses and dodging bullets or rapiers. There are escapes and frenzied pursuits aplenty, steam-trains and even an airship. Five, well earned stars and I will certainly be reading the next two - The Dark Volume and The Chemickal Marriage.

Mrs Temple, baiting a particularly obsequious and treacherous hotel reception clerk...

"Do you know," continued Miss Temple, "I have always meant to inquire as to your brand of pomade, for I have always found your hair to be so very... /managed/. And slick - managed /and/ slick. I have wanted to impart such grooming to any number of other men in the city, but have not known what to recommend - and always forgot to ask!"
"It is Bronson's, Miss."
"/Bronson's/. Excellent." She leaned in with a suddenly serious expression. "Do you never worry about fire?"
"Fire?"
"Leaning too close to a candle? I should think - you know - /whoosh!/" She chuckled. "Ah, it is so pleasant to laugh. But I /am/ in earnest, Mr Spanning."

Yes, it is long, yes it could've been shorter, considerably shorter, and yes the fact that the author clearly didn't know where the story was going is obvious. But, my goodness, what a book?!

If anything, the perambulatory nature of the plot is one of this books delights. Some books lose you because the plot unravels in your hand like paper in the rain. This plot slowly reveals itself. It teases you. It leaves you aching for more.

And I haven't mentioned the varied and colourful characters, or the city and it's environs. The environment itself is reminiscent of Hardy (in terms of the delight the author takes in laying the streets, fields and buildings before the reader), while the characters are beautifully conveyed and reminiscent of Dickens.

There is also something of Tolkein in the structure of the 'volumes' or chapters. While you see events unfold around one of the key characters you are desperate to know what is happening to the others. This is one of the reasons behind the "Just one more page" factor that this book has in spades.

This leads me to the timelessness of the book. Time seems to stand still on the page and around you in 'real world'. It should come with a health wanring: "Reading this book on a train could result in many missed stops!"

I am not surprised by the love it/hate it reviews so far. This book was never going to be scoring 2 or 3 stars. It takes risks, challenges literary norms and breaks all the acceptable rules. I hated it at first but was reassured that it would pay to keep going. Within five chapters I was in a sort of daze, finding myself drifting off during meetings to the streets and hotels of this imaginary world, wondering what was happening to my beloved characters. Rarely does a book stick with you as much as this one.

This book is not just a collection of pages with a very pretty face (and my, what a pretty face it is, too). This is book with many, many hidden depths. Dive in. Explore. Enjoy.