Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Beautiful Dreams, 2 Sep 2009
I can't remember how I found this book; I believe I ran across one of the author's other titles at work, thought it looked interesting, and checked out the rest of her back catalogue. However it happened I'm very glad that it did, because this is the best thing I have read in a long, long time.
Fifteen-year-old Laura and her cousin Rose inhabit a world very much like our own - they have Jesus, 'The Mill on the Floss', demotic Greek, hockey. They also have the Gospel of St Lazarus, and the Place: a pocket of land, a fold in the universe, unmeasurable and inaccessible to all but the very few and most elite - the Dreamhunters. The Place is a world where dreams are marked at map locations; Dreamhunters cross the border at one of two points, sleep in a specific grid reference, catch the dream that has its existence there, and take it back to share with a paying audience. For this is 1906 and, in this world, dreams are what cinema became in ours - more, because each dreamer experiences the dream as their own. There are dreams of healing, dreams of adventure, dreams of peace, dreams of romance - Rose's mother, Grace, specialises in these - and, although Laura is initially unaware of this, there are nightmares, too, and Laura's father, Tziga Hame, the Dreamhunter who first stumbled (literally) upon the Place some twenty years before, has his own dark trade in these. When he vanishes, he leaves Laura this legacy, along with a duty to repair the damage he's done. He also leaves her a strange companion to help her with this burden.
We end on a shocking climax; this is part one of a two-part story, continued in The Dream Quake, which I am impatiently waiting for the postman to bring me any ... day ... now.
Dense, complex, and beautiful: I don't have the words to do justice to this story. I only wish I did.
It isn't just the storyline that sets 'The Rainbow Opera' apart: there's something unique and distinctive about its voice that I can't define. The only thing I can think of is that the author's from New Zealand and that perhaps her background and experience colour the narrative in a way that's slightly alien to my understanding.
This is one of the best and most original fantasies, YA or other, that I've read in years. In a world where the mundane, the run-of-the-mill and the badly written dominate the bestsellers charts, how is it possible that I only stumbled upon this wonderful book by accident?
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
the Place for dreams, or nightmares?, 21 April 2006
Mm, this seemed slow to start with, developing character and relationships. The concept is clever, and good; people who are able to catch dreams, as if they are residual ghosts of a place, by moving into an area simply known as the Place. Yet things are not as they seem to be.
There are many complications that both enrich and confuse the reader; the golem, sandman, NOWN, has interesting connotations, and I hope the sequel will unpick that more.
If you can move through the slower sections and accept some of the inexplicable actions and events then this book is well worth the read, chilling in a true sense, leaving you feeling cold inside with the message about what we do to ourselves.
One peculiarity - why do I keep thinking of Cornelia Funke's books when I go to pick this one up??
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A book beyond your wildest Dreams, 20 Aug 2005
The Rainbow Opera is an amazing book, one of the best I've read in many years. It is well written, packed with suspense, adventure and intrigue, as well as humour and a splash of romance. I really can't wait for the sequel!!!!
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