nightmares Archives - The Y Logs

Yzabel / December 12, 2015

Review: Sandman Overture

Sandman Overture Deluxe Edition by Neil Gaiman

My rating: [rating=5]

Blurb:

Twenty-five years since THE SANDMAN first changed the landscape of modern comics, Neil Gaiman’s legendary series is back in a deluxe edition!

THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE heralds New York Times best-selling writer Neil Gaiman’s return to the art form that made him famous, ably abetted by artistic luminary JH Williams III (BATWOMAN, PROMETHEA), whose lush, widescreen images provide an epic scope to The Sandman’s origin story. From the birth of a galaxy to the moment that Morpheus is captured, THE SANDMAN: OVERTURE will feature cameo appearances by fan-favorite characters such as The Corinthian, Merv Pumpkinhead and, of course, the Dream King’s siblings: Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium, Destruction and Destiny.

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through Edelweiss, in exchange for an honest review.]

Seldom have I regretted having only a PDF copy instead of a paper one—I can usually shake off the regret and unease easily enough. My bank account will NOT love me in weeks to come, all the more since I am now also sorely tempted to get the Sandman omnibus.

I discovered the Sandman comics when I was 18 or so. I used to get French translations from a second-hand books store whenever I had the money (same with the Death comics), and even though I never owned many of them, and ended up selling them later because I 1) had to move, 2) wanted to get them in English instead, I also never stopped wanting to go back time and again to this world.

“Overture” doesn’t disappoint. Gathering the six issues of the eponymous story, it’s a festival of different styles, whether in drawing, colouring, layout or lettering, working all together to create that peculiar yet delightful atmosphere of being in a dream, thrown into ever-changing landscapes where reason always comes with madness, or is it the other way round? Paradoxical staircases. Panels rotating until they come full-circle. Characters in full colour on one page, then switch to pastels or whites on the next, to accomodate a change in the narrative… or—again—is it the other way round?

And however, if you pay closer attention, you realise that it all makes so much sense, and isn’t merely a blend of nonsensical scenes “meant to look like a dream”. Colours, images and forms echo each other, reminding you of something from the previous chapter, or foreshadowing a chapter yet to come. It is truly fascinating. Also, my neck hurts now, because not being able to turn a book around in my hands, I turned my head downwards to look at my screen. I kid you not.

Noteworthy as well is how the book echoes other Sandman stories, in another of those going-full-circle structures I mentioned aboves. Chronologically-speaking, “Overture” comes before “Preludes & Nocturnes”, and can be read independently; but knowing what happened in the Sandman-verse in general, even roughly, will definitely help enjoy this comics even more, as the latter references quite a few characters, events and scenes (I’m positive I missed more than one, too). Remember the crazy ole lady. Remember the Dream of a Thousand Cats. Remember that final word of ‘Hope’. Ever wondered how Dream came to be so weak that he could be imprisoned, in the very first comics? Right. And so many others.

I need this book in physical form. Plain and simple.

As a side note: it also contains a few add-ons in the shape of interviews and Q & As about drawing and lettering, among other things. Those are worth reading just as well, as they cast light on the artists’ choices.

Yzabel / November 5, 2015

Review: The Dream Engine

The Dream Engine by Sean Platt

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

A truth terrible enough to bury for a millennium …

A mysterious boy calling in her sleep …

A secret city that shouldn’t exist …

When Eila Doyle first sees the strange boy beckoning in whispers from somewhere deep in her imagination, she questioned her sanity. She was used to seeing strange things with her eyes closed — that’s what Eila did all day while strapped to the Blunderbuss, Building whatever the Ministry of Manifestation required — but never before have those images felt so real, or so dangerous.

After Eila learns the terrible truth about her reality and the monsters inside it, she thinks that maybe madness might be her only escape…

Review:

[I received a copy of this novel from NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

2.5 stars

A very interesting theme, but ultimately this novel felt more like an introduction.

I liked the idea of a world shaping its inventions through thoughts, from concepts and a strange machine called the Blunderbuss. I liked the explanation behind how this weird science worked, where exactly the concepts and images came from, not to mention that in general, anything that has to do with dreams tends to fascinate me. One part of the world living a relatively placid existence, with nights spent in quiet, without dreams; and the other, its counterpart, having to sift through dreams nightmares in order to send feedback. And the remnants, what nobody wants, the pollution born from human minds, which just goes… somewhere else. Although the explanations weren’t too easy to follow at first, soon they made sense.

Another thing I liked was how the “mysterious boy” didn’t end up as the mandatory love interest, the one that always ends up trampling over the plot in typical YA novels, whether their genre is actually romance or not. It was quite refreshing, and I can only hope that the world and the stakes presented by the “dream engine” will not fall prey to “luuuurve” in the next volume. There’s enough going in without giving in to trends. So, authors, thank you for sticking to the weird science and dreams and contraptions here.

However, as I was reading, I kept feeling that a lot of things often got rehashed and repeated more than necessary—that some trimming would’ve been in order. It took a long time for what I thought would be the plot to unfurl, and while Eila’s hesitation and questioning herself was totally understandable, it still looked to me like beating around the bush, instead of helping flesh out her character as well as others. In the end, Cora, Daw, Levi (for a few minutes, I couldn’t even remember his name, even though I’ve just finished reading the book… that’s how much an impression he made on me), all the others, were more shades than actual people. Eila was the most developed of all, yet her running in circles in her mind kept her at a basic level: I still don’t know what she likes and dislikes, for instance. I think this is the kind of plot where less time should’ve been spent on introspection, and more on subplots (no need for complex ones: simple things such as more than just Atwell confronting Eila after dinner, or someone realising she wasn’t with Cora every evening, etc.).

So much potential, so many endless possibilities, yet never truly explored…

The world itself, albeit interesting, also suffers from the “pocket universe syndrome”, in that the idea behind its foundations is great, but it seems really, really tiny, no more than a city and some land around it. It could be an island, for what it’s worth, completely isolated, and I didn’t get the feeling of a “real” world, for all its talks of airships and pilots bringing goods from other areas. How far is Stensue from Waldron’s Gate? Is Pavilion only under the latter, or does it extend everywhere? Are there other Pavilions under other towns? And so on.

Conclusion: despite finding quite a few likeable elements in there, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. I may or may not pick the second book someday, to see if the potential of this series is going to be properly exploited; right now, though, I really don’t know.

Yzabel / October 5, 2015

Review: Lair of Dreams

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

My rating: [rating=2]

Blurb:

After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O’Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to “read” objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, “America’s Sweetheart Seer.” But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners’ abilities…

Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer?

Review:

[I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Interesting premise, all the more because dreams fascinate me—lucid dreaming, the power to travel in dreams and even shape them—but possibly too ambitious a book for its own good.

The good stuff:

* Dreams and dream walkers. People who can travel in dreams and remember everything upon waking up, consciously alter others’ dreams, find the spirits of the dead to ask them for answers… Meeting other dreamers like them: Henry, Ling, Wai-Mae. The many landscapes found in there, and how they may or may not have ties to the real world. As said: fascinating.

* More bits about the bigger picture: the man in the stove pipe hat. The mysterious men in suits, all with (obviously fake) names of dead presidents. Project Buffalo. Sam’s mother.

* The last chapters, and how the characters had to basically work in both worlds to save the day.

* The sleeping sickness.

* Vivid descriptions, sometimes really creepy and eerie.

And the not so good…:

* Half the characters were left aside or weren’t terribly relevant for a good two thirds of the plot. While I found Ling interesting, and Henry got more screen time, it was frustrating to see Jericho left dangling in his museum, Will pretty much out of the picture all the time, Evie doing her radio show (then partying/getting drunk, rinse and repeat), and Theta and Memphis… just standing there in the background, looking cool? I can easily appreciate a plot with a large cast, but here it felt like the two arcs (the sleeping sickness + Project Buffalo) could have benefitted from having each their own novel.

* Everything being all over the place, including the historical themes (immigrants, racial tensions, the KKK…): interesting, yet so many things to tackle that in the end, just like the main characters, they didn’t really come together.

* Inconsistencies. Why did Ling take ages to notice what should be absolutely oblivious, considering her own abilities within dreams?

* Mabel. There was no point in having her around. The poor girl should just forget about Jericho and go live her life.

* Still a lot of 20s slang. I didn’t particularly care for it, and it was repetitive. Like a good deal of the book, in fact.

Conclusion: Really good ideas, only the execution didn’t convince me, and I felt that more threads were left dangling, without any real, solid resolution (even the sleeping sickness arc isn’t 100% resolved, with questions remaining about what caused it in the first place).

Yzabel / September 17, 2015

Review: Dreams of Shreds and Tatters

Dreams of Shreds and Tatters by Amanda Downum

My rating: [rating=3]

Blurb:

When Liz Drake’s best friend vanishes, nothing can stop her nightmares. Driven by the certainty he needs her help, she crosses a continent to search for him. She finds Blake comatose in a Vancouver hospital, victim of a mysterious accident that claimed his lover’s life – in her dreams he drowns.

Blake’s new circle of artists and mystics draws her in, but all of them are lying or keeping dangerous secrets. Soon nightmare creatures stalk the waking city, and Liz can’t fight a dream from the daylight world: to rescue Blake she must brave the darkest depths of the Dreamlands.

Even the attempt could kill her, or leave her mind trapped or broken. And if she succeeds, she must face the monstrous Yellow King, whose slave Blake is on the verge of becoming forever.

Review:

[I received an advanced copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Granted, I took my sweet time in reading it… so by now the book has been out for quite a few months.

Overall an interesting experience, though I expected more out of it. I’ve been fascinated by the original work behind this, The King in Yellow, for a couple of decades, from the weight it bore in Lovecraft’s works to the stories by Robert Chambers that actually inspired it. Simply suggest one nightmarish yet terribly beautiful and sublime (in a Burkian sense) city, and I will think “Carcosa”. And while we don’t have a play here, we do have art, including the painting of a door.

Mostly I liked the descriptions, especially of what happened in dreams and how some people in Vancouver were affected. Liz the dreamer, chasing after her friend Blake to bring him back from his coma. Blake, lost in a place he doesn’t understand, where pain and promises of eternal pleasure tempt him both. Rainer and his circle of artists who dabble in magic too potent for them. Rae and other people addicted to mania, a dream-inducing drug that does just that, and more, turning them into zombie-like creatures desperately wanting to taste the real dream. Above them all, the shadow of the King in Yellow, watching from his throne, and the Twins, waiting for an opening. Waiting for, yes, a door.

Such imagery I found quite fascinating, even though I admit it didn’t extend to the actual Vancouver (rain and cold is standard weather where I live), and that I found myself eagerly waiting for the oneiric dreams, the ones involving Liz seeking Blake in the strange streets, corridors and rooms in Carcosa, under inhuman skies. Those were the most interesting scenes for me. Also some other mysteries, such as Lailah and the two other “jackals”, which may or may not be akin to certain hounds living beyond the folds of time and space, but…

…But that’s one of the problems that prevented me from enjoying this story more: a lot of side stories and hints that made the characters more enjoyable, and paradoxically were really frustrating, as they’re not resolved in the end. Alex, for instance: his past involvment with Samantha was brushed upon, where it would have deserved more, considering the sequels it left him with. The artists, too: running from a Brotherhood, rivals of another wannabe sorcerer, the beginning of a strange relationship where Rae was concerned… yet all of this collided a bit too fast (almost in a chaos that may have been intended to mirror the circumstances everybody was thrown in, only it didn’t work that well). Such subplots deserved either more developement, or not to have been included at all, as the middle ground didn’t feel so satisfying. More answers as to who was what and what was who would have been appreciated. Where does Liz’s power come from? What about the memories she sacrificed, would those come back to bite her later? What exactly is Lailah? What role did Seker play, apart from being some deus ex machina?

Also, a lot of the characters had a sort of “hype” edge bordering on pedantic, as if they were trying too hard—including the asexual relationship thrown in there (are Liz and Alex happy that way? Because Alex sure doesn’t seem to be, not that much). I’m all for various kinds of relationships instead of the usual, often bland typical ones, but something didn’t quite fit here.

I still liked this story, mind you. I just expected more out of it, I guess.

Yzabel / April 16, 2014

Review: Night Terrors

Night Terrors by Tim Waggoner

My rating: [rating=4]

Summary:

It’s Men In Black meets The Sandman.

Meet the fine men and women of the NightWatch: a supernatural agency dedicated to hunting down rogue nightmares that escape from other realms when people dream about them, while ensuring that other dream-folk are allowed to live among the regular, human population… as long as they play by the rules.

Review:

[I got a free copy through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.]

Well, what can I say… I really liked this one? I tend to naturally gravitate towards themes such as dreams and nightmares, and when I saw that Night Terrors dealt with exactly that—more specifically, nightmares made “flesh”—I just couldn’t pass on it. Although I’m also a glutton for punishment, since clowns have always creeped me out, and guess what Jinx is? Yep. The cover kind of gave it away, after all.

Audra and Jinx are agents of the Shadow Watch, an organisation bent on regulating interactions between the human world and Nod, a place where dreams have attained a state of self-awareness. Audra is an Ideator, a human whose psyche created and fleshed out a nightmare (Jinx), until the latter became his own self. Since then, both have been working for that special agency.

Some aspects of this novel rest on well-known tropes, such as the two “cops” with a record of regularly causing havoc while on a mission, or the dashing potential love interest with mysterious goals and a mysterious employer. Or the shady bar with shady customers and a shady bartender who deals information. However, those being traditional fixtures of the detective novel/UF genre, I wasn’t too surprised to see them here. What I appreciated was how they were, but didn’t become too heavy.

I seriously dug the world-building here. The narrative, told in Audra’s voice, is peppered with small doses of information here and there, which allowed me to qickly grasp what Nod and the Shadow Watch stood for, how things worked there, what an Ideator was, and so on. Audra has a tendency to address the reader, which can be annoying to a degree if you don’t like that; personally, I thought it created some kind of complicity, as if I was allowed to get a glimpse of what dreams are really made of.

The characters weren’t the most developed ever, but I found them fun and sympathetic nonetheless. The nightmares/dreamt creatures came in many flavours, ranging from relatively human-looking dreams to strange animals, fear-inducing shadows and even Deathmobiles beaming green aging lasers into their enemies. The concept of their having Night and Day Aspects added interesting possibilities in my opinion. Night Jinx was pretty funny (in his own frightening ways), while Day Jinx turned out to be quite the decent fellow. There’s also a hint of a potential love interest, as said above. It never becomes overwhelming, which I was grateful for: the story’s stakes are high enough, and I seldom root for making-out sessions in such cases. The novel paved the way for more in that regard… or not… and it doesn’t really matter.

I admit I wasn’t too keen on the Evil Gloating speech of the villain towards the end, but at least it wasn’t the Bond Villain Stupidity kind.

As a whole, this book simply… clicked with me. I can’t really explain in objective terms.