Author: J E Alexander
Publisher: Mechanical Owl Media
Rating: WARTY
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration of any kind for this review.
Alexander has deftly secreted his prologue away in chapter one. Finally! An author who gets it! I very much appreciated that. It is, however, still a prologue and by definition completely boring and typically pointless. The story actually takes off in chapter two and then it does take off, which I also very much appreciated. I loved chapter two. You could quite comfortably skip chapter one (aka prologue) and lose nothing by it. The problem is that it was all downhill after that, and I could not bring myself to continue to plod through this when there are so many other potentially great stories waiting for me to discover.
Emmett is a foundling, and he was supposed to stay with Nancy, his best friend since college, since she was his legal guardian (his guardian anyway) until his eighteenth birthday, but he did not get along with her husband, and he felt this huge need to leave Houston and go somewhere and do something. There is no good reason given for why he can't wait two more weeks, but the more I read about Emmett, the more I realized the truth about him: he's just stupid, and that explains it. The story really is no smarter than Emmett, either. It's basically your standard fight between good and evil under the ostensibly novel guise of Druids this time, but in this novel, it's nothing but fight, retreat, rinse, repeat, and it quite frankly was boring as hell.
The main character is Emmett (aka the deliberately-kept-ignorant chosen one), and he has a fascination with movies and is frequently quoting them, but instead of going to California and Hollywood, he heads to Florida in pursuit of his mother. I don't really get this, because we've been given no history of Emmett and no reason why he would do this. Chapter two is larded with movie references. I don’t get that either, and neither does any character in the novel, so I had to wonder what the point of that was, but taking that as a premise, as the author evidently wishes us to, why would he not go to California?
Chapter three begins with an unnecessarily detailed description of his route out of Texas and into Louisiana. It reminds me of the first draft of my own Saurus! I've traveled this route (both figuratively and literally!) and I can verify Alexander's descriptions, but it seems pointless, and I wanted it to be over. I'm not a fan of road trip stories, unless there's honestly something worth seeing, and in this case there really wasn't.
Emmett eventually meets Amala (aka the chosen one's babe, who is evidently a Druish Princess...), but we meet her as a child, right before he is born. She's a chestnut-haired child with a snake. She's accompanied by red-haired Rhiannon, her de facto mom (if not biological - it's a prologue, after all - why would it tell us anything useful?!), and a man named Oliver, who is possibly her father. They both disappear after the first chapter. The trio has arrived in a large city (which seems to encompass an improbably large number of abandoned buildings!), and are looking for something, searching in disregard of personal safety because the local gangs have learned the hard way to avoid this trio of Druids. Kudos to Alexander for taking this away from the usual suspects and introducing something which, while not new, is at least different, but he does nothing new with it, and worse, he lards up the story with so many other tropes and clichés that the novelty of this one aspect is sadly tarnished.
With the help of Amala's "wisdom" (the snake), they find the house they're looking for. It’s old, rotten, abandoned (of course), fetid and filthy, yet this is where the old woman they seek has chosen to meet them because she's birthing a child! Why? Why there? Again, no explanation. She's is in process of delivering Emmett - the eponymous waking dreamer - from a street woman who is evidently an addict and likely will die from this delivery. This woman disappears after the first chapter, too.
After the baby comes into the world, so does evil - "The Grinning Man" with the tired trope of red eyes, who wants to taste the child, but he's repelled into the darkness by the old woman - the Archivist, believe it or not, shades of The Matrix - because it’s not yet his time! When will soon be now? Since this blog is as much about writing as it is about reading, let me digress a minute and talk not so much about this novel specifically (I have read only fifty percent of it), but much more generally. I've always wondered why evil actually gets "a time". Even in the Bible, the Adversary is loosed ('cos he's a loser?!) for a spell after being bound for a thousand years. Why? Is 'Good' not strong enough to prevent evil's time? I find that sad (and in the Bible very revealing about how extraordinarily limited the god of the Israelites actually was)! I also don’t get the twin tropes of evil vs. good, and of prophecy. It's pathetic, but sometimes you can get a good story out of it despite the boring clichés; unfortunately, we don’t get that good story anywhere near often enough.
I don’t mind a story at all which has these elements if it’s well-written, but they rarely are. Instead, they regurgitate deathly-tired tropes without so much as a stab at logic, let alone justification. It would be nice to read something truly different for a change. But of course there must be the balance between good and evil, for without evil, how can we know good? You're heard that one, right? Well let me put in my too sensible no censorship two cents (my sense, too?) on that: I can tell how good a carrot cake is without having to have a large carrot forced up my ass first…. But that's just me, and I don’t like large carrots up my ass, but if you do, then by all means substitute something you really don’t like instead, even if it involves neither carrot nor ass, so you can make the same comparison.
Now, do you agree that we can tell good from evil without having to experience the evil? Do you agree that it’s possible, for example, to experience the joy of a good night's sleep without having to be forcibly kept awake for several days to contrast the evil of that with the good of peaceable rest? Of course you do. Can you experience the good of holding a baby or enjoying a young child's laughter without having to know horrid details of beaten, starving, and tortured, or murdered children? I can. I'm pretty darned sure that sure you can, too (two can?), at least if you're anywhere near "normal' (which I don’t even claim for myself!). So empirically, we appear to have proven beyond any reasonable doubt that you do not need evil to enjoy and appreciate good. Why is it that all-too-many writers cannot?
So we cannot seem to find a new angle here, and we cannot get away from mindless repetition. It's like a formulaic pop song: verse, chorus, verse, chorus, with not even a middle eight, and it's not appreciated precisely because it's always the same. Evil attacks, good retreats. Good is always limited, passive, and weak, evil is always powerful, aggressive, and sneakily unpredictable. Who wants to read something like that with no leavening at all? It;s made worse, if that's possible, by Alexander's spastic dedication to endless mystery, because no one will tell anyone anything, least of all explain what's going on to Emmett. Half-way through a novel I expect something to be revealed, but nothing is.
On page eight, "…her ophidian friend who raised its head…" struck me as a really weird sentence! You don't usually partner 'who' with 'its'! Interesting word usements he structures, as Steve Martin might phrase it. I've mentioned this before - and recently - but it bears repeating: the 'monkey' (as an insult to humans) trope has now officially been forcibly rammed tediously beyond tiresome and deeply into boring and unoriginal. Writers need to find something fresh to have spill from the mouths of their villains. For me, monkey isn’t an insult at all, actually, I'm rather proud of human genetic heritage.
Back to our story in progress: So Emmett, on his illogical and precipitous journey (we'll learn that Emmett isn't the stoutest stave in the rack), arrives in Florida late at night, running low on gas, and takes a sad-looking exit from the Interstate into the middle of nowhere to gas-up. Did I mention that this guy is pretty clueless? He's had all day to do this and he leaves it until he has no choice. Actually, I found that hard to credit and it hit me with the harsh realization that, yep, I am reading a novel. I hate it when the illusion bubble pops! Even if he were a complete moron, which he could well be, Emmett still would have stopped frequently for rest-room breaks and junk food binges. I can't credit that he would get into this situation ordinarily, so I have to conclude that he's stupid (and an ingrate it turns out). Of course, as a writer, Alexander has to get his character into some sort of position for the dramatic rescue to occur, evidently. I just think there were far better ways of doing it than the one we got! And it exposes the plot weakness: why did Amala and Kieran leave it until quite literally the last minute to rescue Emmett? Why have they been absent from his entire life until now? Again, No Explanation!
Like Batman and Robin, these two supposedly heroic figures spring from nowhere and take out Emmett's attackers. They save his life and this is where ingratitude sets in. Three days later he wakes from the attack in Oregon, diametrically opposite the corner of the country he was in, and he has not a shred of gratitude for those who helped him. Given his breezy personality from earlier chapters, I found this incredible, too, and another slap up-side the face reminding me, hey, no matter how immersed you were becoming, you're just reading a novel, just get used to it!
So what went wrong? Well, this story started coming apart big-time for me around chapters seven and eight. This is when they’re at Silvan Dea (which serves no purpose for me but to keep reminding me of Opus Dei - from Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code - for some reason!). To begin with, it had made no sense that Emmett was pissed off with the people who saved his life, but it made far less sense that these people quite literally explained nothing whatsoever to him despite repeated promises that all would be explained. If he were going to get angry, it would be at his nonsensically and deliberately being kept in the dark about anything and everything. But as I said, he's not exactly the most powerful wand in Olivander's. Oh, they do keep on telling him they'll explain, but they actually explain absolutely nothing ever. I'm fond of mystery, but mystery for the sake of being mysterious is bullshit. It did not increase my anticipation or pique my interest. Instead, it made me think "amateur" and additionally, I've started to dislike Emmett, which isn't a good thing if I'm expected to keep reading this!
On some minor issues, I don’t get Mrs Carmichael at the restaurant. She sounds British but there is no other indication of her origin. If she's American, her mode of speech is way-the-hell off! Neither do I really get Emmett's obsession with movies. It's never rationalized or justified. Yeah. I get that you give your character a quirk or two to make them memorable, or interesting, or intriguing, but this doesn't seem to be working very well here, especially when he persists in movie references with people who quite clearly are not getting a thing he's saying. This tells me that Emmett is both too lacking in empathy to note that his obscure references are falling on deaf ears, and he's also too stupid to adjust his interactions based on their reaction.
So at about one third the way through this, it had become a real slog to keep reading it. Chapters nine and ten revealed two facts to me: The Waking Dreamer owes a lot to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV show, and Alexander is yet another writer who doesn't understand that staunch ≠ stanch. I've seen this a lot lately, and not just in self-published books. Are there really that many illiterate book editors out there? While we're on this topic, I really don't see that "undulating" is a viable partner of "startling speed"! Yes, it's not technically wrong, but doesn't 'undulating' suggest something of a more steady, measured motion to you? It was that pairing of implied leisurely motion with the definite emphasis on speed which really struck me as bizarre, and pulled me out of the story again! Yeah, I may be nit-picking, but these things are important when there are so many of them hitting you one after another. I think any reader can forgive a writer a few faux pas, especially if the story is a good one overall, but even a good story is dragged down when so many writing issues crop-up in such a short space of reading time.
I like Joss Whedon well enough, although I'm not given to building shrines to him and worshiping him as all-too-many fans evidently do, but for some reason which I can't quite define, the Buffy series was nauseating to me. I think part of the problem at least was the bullshit martial-arts fighting against all-but-overwhelming odds in every-single-episode (not that I watched it, but I've seen enough bits and pieces of it to have the heavy weight of that distinct impression pressed sorely upon me!). The Waking Dreamer seems fond of ripping-off that aspect of it very addictively, and that's what ultimately turned me off this novel, not only for the tedious metronomic, absolutely unchanging repetitiveness of it, but also, with both the inclusion of this nonsense to begin with, and in the poor writing of it. For example, at one point we're told that the Druids who are fighting are a well-honed team working fluently together in the fight ("...one pushing forward as the other guarded their rear...", but very shortly afterwards, we learn that one of them is killed precisely because no one was watching his rear (and apparently his magic wasn't either)!
These people supposedly have access to powerful magic, but when it comes down to it, they're reduced to common bar-room brawling, and Alexander seems to have no abhorrence of describing it with relish and no small amount of salivation. For me, that both betrays and cheapens the magical aspects of a story. If Alexander wants to write fantasy, then bring on the swords and dragons and go at it with all of the trope brutality that genre implies (this is why I'm not a big fan of historical fantasy: it's far, far too clichéd), but if he's writing a modern magic story, then I don't get this medieval portrayal. Nor do I get why the Druids are so weak when they're in their own grove amongst nature, surrounded by trees! It's been pushed down our throat thus far that this is their "element", yet they're still at a huge disadvantage. If they were fighting in the city, this would make at least some kind of sense. On their own turf? Not so much.
The improbable fantasy elements in play here are exposed even further when Alexander uses a phrase like "vicious attack" in the midst of a fight wherein the aggressors have proven themselves beyond vicious already, and which is being pressed with no regard whatsoever for Marquis of Queensberry rules (or any other, for that matter)! How much more vicious could that one specific attack actually be? These attackers go to eleven! Or are we to understand that the attack up to this point was quite a mild one (as mindless, brutal, overwhelming assaults go), but that the blow which struck Sophie was a particularly naughty one? Did the attacker touch the hollow of her thigh, as the omnipotent god of the Hebrews did to overcome the mere mortal, "Old Man" Jacob?! That was vicious! How dare they?
And if it's down to brute-force fighting, why are the Druids not armed with automatic weapons? I mean for goodness sakes an M2 Browning .50 cal. machine gun would readily take care of these "Revenants" no matter what their numbers, so why employ an iron stave (and never a staff!) in the defense? Do machine guns not contain iron? In the absence of good sense, the Revenants win the day, forcing the Druids to retreat, so I guess the force was not strong with these Druids after all. I read no explanation as to why evil had become so powerful, nor why the Druids were so laughably weak, or why this battle between dark and light was even taking place at all, but it wasn't as sadly laughable as the character Ellie, who appeared from nowhere with brother Troy. Is she a "baby sister" or a "woman"? The two are not the same, but she gets both descriptions. Why belittle a woman in such an insulting manner, making her whimper, to boot? There was no need for that.
We go immediately from that to the prospect of them entering icily-cold running water and the immediate concern over Sebastian's open wound - like he'll bleed to death in the water. What? They weren't concerned about this before? If they were not, then there's even less need to be concerned about it here! The icy water will stanch the flow. Sebastian ought to be more staunch!
In the bigger picture, for Amala to expect that Emmett will have waking "dreams" (she means visions), and not even have the decency and courtesy to both educate him and to warn him about them is beyond irresponsible in the context of their circumstances. It’s not like there hasn’t been plenty of time for this. At that point I not only disliked Emmett, I no longer like Amala, who is way too mysterious to be even intelligible, let alone likable, but if the plan is to pair her off with Emmett, then they're made for each other, as clueless as they both are.
It was when Alexander started gearing up for version three of his titanic and brutal battle between overwhelming hoards of Revenants versus the handful of Druids that I said, "Check please! I'm outta here!" I see no point in beating my head against the brick wall that this novel all-too-rapidly became, when I can instead, dive into the warm, welcoming waters of something fresh and new. Time is short, but my patience is shorter! This novel is a confirmed warty! It's going nowhere and I'm going in search of something more entertaining.
