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Dream London (2013)

by Tony Ballantyne(Favorite Author)

3.32 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1781081743 (ISBN13: 9781781081747)

languge

English

genre

Fantasy

publisher

Solaris

review 1: Another addition to my rapidly growing pile of urban fantasy. This one reads like a cross between the populist outrage of "A Tale of Two Cities" and the morning-after of a drug party. I mean the latter in a good sense: the novel is very imaginative, the urban setting is even more memorable than that of China Mieville's "Perdido Street Station". The fact that all these dreamscapes with infinitely growing towers, labyrinthine parks, and orange frog-men are superimposed onto the actual map of London (more or less) only adds to the enchantment. The social agenda is in-your-face but since I am largely sympathetic to it, I did not find it too intrusive. My only problem is with the narrative voice. The first-person, charming-rogue narrator Captain James Wedderburn is initially ap... morepealing but quickly gets tiresome. Memo to myself: not to overdo narrative unreliability in my own writing!
review 2: Honey Peppers was a fantastic character. This book had little spurts of brilliance like her - some great metaphors, some great characters (Honey Peppers and Mister Monagan, really), some great lines of dialogue, some great weird ideas - but mostly it just wasn't for me. Too often, it felt disjointed, frustrating, obnoxious, and confused, which maybe was the point, but it wasn't what I happen to like in a novel, haha. The main character didn't feel likeable. I think this is a book for people who really enjoy symbolism and hunting for meaning and for what the novel might be trying to say, not for people who like a more straightforward story. Hard to explain why this one didn't thrill me, but yeah. It didn't. less

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