Monday, February 25, 2008

A Mid-Way Book Review

I am half-way through reading The Glass Book of the Dream Eaters, and it has turned into a chore to read. For one thing, the chapters are painfully long (the one I'm currently reading is 74 pages!).
My main gripe is that I still haven't been told any more about 'The Process' since they described it in the first twenty pages, and the story hasn't actually moved on since then at all, aside from the characters physically going from this house to the next in search of some answers to a question they are not entirely sure of. So we get the same events told three times over, and our three narrators aren't defined enough to make the narratives different or interesting, relying heavily on stereotype to bring the characters to life but doing little to explore these stereotypes or make them anything more than two-dimensional. There are a few erotic passages which do break up the monotony a little, but they don't seem to serve any other purpose except to say "the Process makes you lose your morality", which has been (over-) stated already. It tries to be a mystery novel, but the mystery doesn't seem to be all that exciting, or dangerous, or mysterious enough for me to actually care if they solve it or not (I'm optimistic enough to think that perhaps that's because there's an exciting part to the puzzle that has not yet been revealed, but I'm starting to lose hope).
I'm just thoroughly bored now, but determined to read to the end. I hope the ending is worth this effort. There's actually a sequel coming out, which makes me think that if they don't conclude things in this book (at 784 pages), then the writer has some serious issues.

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