Gregory Pettit

Pettit has conceived an interesting plot which seems highly original (I'm not yet highly versed in its genre). Julian Lucas Adler is a "dreamwalker" - one who stalks through the dreams of others. He seems to be half voyeur and half reluctant interventionist who fights the forces of evil in the land of dreams (vampires in particular), whatever the connection may be to the real world.

The biggest force of evil is Pettit's tragic writing style which doesn't induce slumber but rather mires the reader down in so much unnecessary descriptive text that the book becomes easy to put down. Pettit needs to remove the simile from his toolbox altogether and ruthlessly weed out descriptions of personalities, places, and circumstances that are peripheral to the action and plot. Several examples of ghastly simile are:

"I nodded, but my stomach churned like a tumble dryer with a full load."

"I didn’t stop staring—at Edward Sloane. He’d walked in with the Chapter Master, and he was suddenly Mia’s supervisor. I needed this explained like a junkie needs a fix."

The book needs similes like a catfish needs reading glasses.

Pettit's target audience is a bit obscure. I would have guessed that it would include older teenagers as well as the younger middle aged male demographic. Then I read the following:

"Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a major teaching hospital with a budget of over three hundred million pounds. That budget is dwarfed by the value of the land that the generic-looking, glass-and-brick hospital sits on, and, as I strolled through the foyer, I was amazed that most of its clientele was made up of the general public."

Who, exactly, wants hospital budgets in a fantasy adventure story? I read fiction precisely to get away from this level of reality. Hospital budgets are a nightmare.… (mehr)

Disclaimer: I was given this book for free by the author as part of the Library Thing Member Giveaway (LTMG) program for an honest review.

This story picked up where book #01 left off. I found it full of action and great character development I did not see the ending of book #01 coming and I did not see the end of book #02. It is a great story that you don't want to put down. Each of the characters have likeable and unlikable qualities but in the end, the good qualities in the majority of them come through. I found that all the characters were important to the story, not just the main one Julian. I believe his relationship with Jack, Father O, Badger, his wife Dana, his daugther Olivia and Mia important to how the story progressed and their involvment in the events that happen.

If you like great a story with good character development and not knowing if the good guys are good or the bad guys are really bad then this is a story that you would enjoy. In my opinion, this story ends on just as much as a cliff hanger as book #01. I'm really looking forward to the next installment in story.… (mehr)