The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters
I'm sorry. I tried. I just can't finish this book.
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist starts out well if a little wordy. I liked Miss Temple and Cardinal Chang. Dr. Svenson not so much - I found him kind of boring. And that, in a nutshell, is my problem with this book. It is a great premise - an evil cabal practicing mind control, blackmail and murder via a strange combination of alchemy and science. There's violence and sex and Victorian values, Oh My! You would think that this would be right up my alley. And on the surface it is.
But after reading 350 pages I'm finding myself just too tired to go on, especially as the action at this point has become very repetitious. Hero/heroine finds his/herself in tight spot, is confronted with/by a member of the cabal, is left to die but manages somehow to live and escapes to fight another day. Sometimes more than once in the same chapter. And this happens over and over again to all three of the main characters. Meanwhile the details on the glass books and the cabal are portioned out so slowly as to be excruciatingly painful.
After the first 100 pages I decided to read this book more as a send up or parody of the Victorian Mystery/Fantasy novel. That actually helped quite a bit for the next 100 pages but it just wasn't enough.
I'm OK with long, wordy novels so long as I feel like I'm getting somewhere. Heck, sometimes I like long, wordy novels that don't go anywhere, so long as they are fund to read. Unfortunately The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters just isn't doing it for me right now.