Customer Reviews

The Dark Dreamweaver (Remin Chronicles)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

For parents and children looking for the next BIG young adult epic fantasy, here's one with magic, suspense, and adventure -- with an entomological twist. What in the natural world could be more magical to children than the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly? Granted, it also includes dragons, a multi-headed frog and even a talking jellyfish, but the message is upbeat and stresses the importance of friendships and teamwork throughout.

The story unfolds when a young boy named David discovers a wizard held captive in a monarch butterfly's body. David soon learns from the wizard, Houdin, that help is needed to stop the evil Thane, in the Dream World of Remin, from turning everyone's dreams into nightmares. As David is guided on an adventure of a lifetime he meets an odd assortment of characters and learns to use his inherent magical powers and courage, intelligence, and imagination to defeat the villain and -- even more importantly -- to confront and overcome his own fears. The scientific twist and creative wordplay make The Dark Dreamweaver much more than a story about a boy fighting an evil wizard. Also includes a glossary of resources and information about monarch butterflies.

If you crave a visit to a magical place populated by pleasant but unearthly creatures, a locale filled with clever riddles, nonstop adventure, and intrepid pals, The Dark Dreamweaver is your kind of reading.

Written by Baltimore resident Nick Ruth, the tale begins with young David pleading with his mother for more reading time before lights-out. At first we think that David must be an insatiable bookworm, but then we learn the real reason for his desire to stay awake and read. He's plagued of late by horrible nightmares that feature a big guy with white hair and gray skin wearing a long robe. "I can feel your fear," this frightful figure growls at David. "It fills me."

Who'd want to snooze with that to look forward to?

Despite David's efforts, the nightmare returns again and again. Worse yet, it's happening everywhere, according to a story in the newspaper.

The tale that Ruth skillfully weaves transports David on a journey to a world called Remin. The trip should last weeks and probably does. But in our world, it's a one-night jaunt lest David's parents notice his absence. In this short amount of time, the boy must help Houdin the wizard return to his homeland and, we hope, to his real form. Early on, we learn that Houdin carries a reincarnation curse that imprisons him in a cycle. He repeatedly turns into a butterfly. When David meets him, Houdin is in his caterpillar stage, which makes for some interesting methods of conversation between boy and larva. In fact, Houdin points out, David is the only person who has ever been able to converse with him.

Off this seemingly mismatched duo flies through the vortex, to a charmed place and one near fiasco after another. When they set off on their final quest -- to stop the evil dreamweaver who is causing nightmares worldwide and to rescue Remin in the process -- David's companions form a delightfully hodgepodge team. Illustrator Sue Concannon's drawings give enlightening shape to each creature.

This tale encourages liberal flexing of the imagination muscle. Watch for more stories featuring the dauntless David as Ruth works on the next tale in The Remin Chronicles.

I like fantasy, and this is a good one. As the book opens, the world has been afflicted with an epidemic of nightmares and insomnia. David is one of the sufferers, but he still has enthusiasm for the Monarch butterflies he is raising. One of them turns out to be a wizard from another world, cursed to cycle endlessly from egg to caterpillar to butterfly. He desperately needs help to return to his world and stop the villain who is wrecking his world and causing the outbreak of nightmares in ours. Young David steps into the breach and saves both worlds with his creativity, intelligence, and attention to the world around us.

David takes control of the cause of nightmares, and he banishes them. This could be quite helpful reading for young people suffering from too much imagination at night. It should entertain and inspire its audience.

Its a really good book. There are many imaginative characters. My favorites are Sir Heads-A-Lot who can change his head, and Fred and Michelle who are water serpents. The author put alot of creativity into making the bad guy, Thane. The book has some really tense parts too that make it exciting, especially at the end.

When I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I never saw any real emotion from the characters. The book's plot line, on the other hand, was riveting and suspensful. It begins in a small suburb where the main character David discovers a caterpillar that is actually a wizard named Houdin from the magical world of Remin where the dreams come from and spectrum is the power. He was turned into a caterpillar by an evil wizard Thane who wields the imaginator and uses it to make dreams into nightmares. Accompanied by strangecompanions such as Queenie, the wolfat, Sir Heads-a-lot, the entertainer, and Aradel, the big living blob, David sets off to stop Thane. I gave this book 3 stars because, although lacking real emotion, it had an amazing plot and a colorful group of protagonists.

The first book of Nick Ruth's "The Remin Chronicles" series, The Dark Dreamweaver is a deftly woven story of fantasy and magic enhanced with occasional black-and-white illustrations by Sue Concannon. A young boy who raises Monarch caterpillars has his world turned upside down when one of them talks to him and claims to be a wizard in dire need. And an adventure begins that requires imagination, courage, intelligence, and the power of friendship to make dreams come true and rescue two worlds from dire peril. An enchanting story for all ages.

The Dark Dreamweaver is an extremely good book. If you liked Harry Potter, you will love this book. It contains a story about a young boy (David) who collects monarch butterflies annually and watches them grow. This time, though he caught one that can talk! He learns magic, and gets caught up in an awsome adventure with Houdin, the wizard/caterpillar, Kira, the dreamweaver, Sir Heads-a-Lot from a parallel universe , Aradel, a talking, shapeshifting blob,and his two cats. Can they defeat the force trying to destroy Remin and Earth??!! Find out in the Dark Dreamweaver.

Nick Ruth's The Dark Dreamweaver is a lighthearted fantasy. David goes to Remin to help a wizard trapped in the life cycle of a monarch butterfly. There he meets others. Together they set out to save the Remin city and Houdin the wizard.

Along the way David learns wizard skills. He hopes to use his new found knowledge to free the city and the wizard. Due to the short life cycle of a monach butterfly, the group is in a hurry to complete their quest. For in Remin, time moves faster than it does on Earth.

The Dark Dreamweaver is a fantasy tale of a boy named David who must travel to another world on a quest. It's my favorite type of fantasy story, one that involves travel in some way between our ordinary world and a world containing magic, ideally with the two worlds having a continued link.

David finds himself dreaming regularly of a scary, dark-eyed creature. The dreams are so frightening, and so frequent, that he dreads going to sleep. He reads in the paper that there have been worldwide complaints about nightmares and restlessness. Eventually, he discovers that the cause of the nightmares lies in another world. David first learns of this other world after he and his parents collect a series of monarch butterfly eggs, in support of a family tradition of observing the entire life cycle of the butterflies. To his astonishment, during the caterpillar phase, on of the caterpillars starts to talk to him. The caterpillar is "a little wizard in big trouble." The wizard, Houdin, has been placed by an enemy under a reincarnation curse, stuck in an endless cycle of egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, and butterfly. Houdin asks David for his help to break the curse by defeating the enemy, Thane, in the parallel world of Remin.

David, like any right-minded eleven year old, jumps at the chance to help, especially once Houdin assures him that time moves differently in Remin, and he won't be away long enough for his parents to worry. Once in Remin, he finds a magical world populated with unusual creatures, several of whom become his friends. He also gets some on-the-job training to become a wizard, something that he's always dreamed of. David and his new friends embark upon a quest across Remin, in search of Thane, as well as a valuable energy-generator that Thane has stolen. He discovers along the way that Thane's actions are influencing the dreams of people in his own world, creating the nightmares, because of a symbiotic relationship between the worlds involving dreams.

There's a lot to like about this inventive story. There are two sea-serpent spies/gossip collectors named Fred and Michelle who move around the worlds via water pipes, and bicker in entertaining fashion. There's a man named Sir Heads-a-lot, a visitor from yet another world, who carries around a bunch of tiny animal heads and uses them to transform into various animals. I also enjoyed the way that magic is treated in the book - it's real work, requiring focus and imagination, helped out by a sort of pixie dust called spectrum and some very cool magic wands. Finally, I liked the author's reverence for the monarch butterfly life cycles. There's some nice supporting material about monarch butterflies at the end of the book, and 5% of the proceeds from the book are donated to help reforest the monarch butterfly overwintering sites.

Overall, I found The Dark Dreamweaver to be a fast-paced, well-written tale, offering an unconventional take on magic. It reminded me a little bit of Anatopsis, by Chris Abouzeid, which also features a relatively scientific approach to magic. I think that The Dark Dreamweaver will be especially appealing to boys in the nine to twelve age range, particularly if they dream of performing magic or are fascinated by insects. Which is not to say that girls and adult won't enjoy it, too. There are strong female characters, and some lyrical descriptions to balance the fast-paced action. It's well worth checking out. The sequel, The Breezes of Inspire, is also available.

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on May 6, 2007.

Ok, I'm going to start with a confession: I only got to page 85 of the 218 pages of this book before calling it quits. The following is why I cannot spend any more time with this book and why you shouldn't spend any.

First, all the characters are incredibly undefined and about as dimensional as cardboard, so it's really hard to get involved with them or care about them. Even the main character, David, is of unspecified age -we are never told his age - at the beginning of the book I could have imagined him to be as old as 11 or 12, by page 85 he seemed closer to 6 or 7. There is no description of his life - no description of school, of his friends, or anything other than he has been getting headaches and has two parents. We keep hearing from the narrative voice and the other characters that he has a lot of imagination, but there really isn't any evidence for this that is given in the story.

The places in the story which would be obvious opportunities to show more about who David is are the times when he has to make choices. In each instance, instead of taking the reader through the thought process that leads David to make his decisions, the author rushes us through the scene as if he (the author) has no confidence in his ability to describe it or assumes the reader has no patience to hear about it.

Example: page 50, when David is about to perform his first magic by using a wand, he hesitates and suggests that it might " `be better to wait for Kira? I do want to be a wizard but it might be better if you work with someone older.'" Here the author breaks in to quickly comment on David's choice adding nothing particularly interesting or revealing: "It was tough for David to volunteer to step aside but he wanted to do what was best." Then before there is any chance for a dramatic moment to occur in which the reader might start to get a fuller sense of who David is by hearing more about what he's thinking and feeling about this important moment, Houdin, the wizard, rushes in as follows: "Houdin quickly made him feel better, `No, I've said it before....magic is dependent on imagination. ........and you seem to have the kind of imaginative, questing mind that is required. Let's try." Nice short circuit of any dramatic possibility there - God forbid. The author seems to be the kind of person who when seeing that someone is upset tries to talk them out of their feelings instead of asking them how they feel and why.

Second: The language and descriptions are weak. Very weak. Very, very weak. I know this is supposed to be written for children readers, but the writing is so ordinary, perfunctory and, let's face it, boring, that I think even kids will fall asleep from it:

Page 30 " `When I was here before, spectrum was everywhere. Thane has most of it now. This is really bad.'
David turned from the road and the field and faced the archway. He took a deep breath. He wasn't sure what he had gotten himself into and the adventure so far had been exciting, but it appeared that it was going to get a lot more interesting from here on out."

To whom does it appear that it's getting more interesting, the narrator, or David or the reader? In any case it's a really boring way to cue the reader without having to bother writing detail that is in fact interesting and arresting to the reader.

Here's another example of the author copping out of having to actually depict something about David in an interesting way. David has just been informed that he will not be able to use wizarding powers in his own world. Instead of showing us David's thought process and feeling state, he tells us twice about David's "enthusiasm": Page 43 "David thought about this and then his enthusiasm came flooding back. `That's OK,' he said enthusiastically. `It's better than never being a wizard. What's next?'"

This is only slightly more interesting writing than "Dick and Jane."

Weak characters, and pedestrian writing would almost be excusable if the story was compelling. Unfortunately, this is not the case. As of page 85 almost nothing has occurred in the story except a lot of explanation about something called "spectrum" and some device called an "Imaginator" which was stolen by an evil wizard named Thane for reasons that are unclear at best. David has been transported to a world called Remin by a wizard who was cursed by Thane to take the form of a caterpillar who talks David into helping him go back to his world to save it.

Actually, the above paragraph makes it sound kind of interesting doesn't it. But to take eighty-five pages to do it?

If you want to spend 85 pages to learn what I just described in the above paragraph, be my guest. But I think, if you want to read a great story, well told, about wizards, you're better off re-reading any of the Harry Potter books.