The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (Vols 1 and 2)

Here begins an extraordinary alliance—and a brutal and tender, shocking, and electrifying adventure to end all adventures.

It starts with a simple note. Roger Bascombe regretfully wishes to inform Celeste Temple that their engagement is forthwith terminated. Determined to find out why, Miss Temple takes the first step in a journey that will propel her into a dizzyingly seductive, utterly shocking world beyond her imagining—and set her on a collision course with a killer and a spy—in a bodice-ripping, action-packed roller-coaster ride of suspense, betrayal, and richly fevered dreams.

~From the back cover of Volume 1

*****

Sounds pretty cool, huh?  Yeah, that’s what I thought.  Then I started reading this monster.  Wow.  Let’s talk about where I think it all went wrong.

The premise isn’t bad, but it’s horribly convoluted.  I read over 800 pages and I’m still not sure exactly what why it all happened.  Something political, I think.   I’m not sure.  It’s not like I didn’t read the damn thing, I did.  In some ways I wanted to know what happened.  But I should be able to tell you and I can’t.

Let’s talk about characters.  All 15million of them.  We have 3 main protagonists (give or take a few) and a Metro busload of antagonists and they are almost impossible to keep straight.  You’d think that the fact they keep dying would help you sort them out, but it just seems like one bites it and another one enters the picture.  If that weren’t enough, apparently everyone in these books is downing some serious “let’s do the dirty!” juice because everyone seems to be very randy (in a Austin Powers kinda way if you get my drift.)

Lest you think that I have something against sex in books, I don’t.  But, this book is over the top in terms of respect and appropriateness (is that a word?).  And although I’m rarely judging authors personally based on their writing, I can’t help but think of Gordon Dahlquist (the author, lest you be confused) as a semi-misogynistic creep.

So, confusing story, too many characters and insulting treatment of women.  It sounds like it’s this should be filed under “stupid reader problem” and not something inherent in the book and I guess that’s possible.  All I know is that I read a lot and I like and understand most of what I read, this just wasn’t one of those things.  If you ask me, don’t bother with this one.  Leave it in the bookstore.

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters vol 1 by Gordon Dahlquist, 464 pages

The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters vol 2 by Gordon Dahlquist, 413 pages