The Glass Book of Dream Eaters [Import] [Paperback]

Gordon Dahlquist (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; Open Market Ed edition (2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670916528
• ISBN-13: 978-0670916528
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,229,488 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, August 2, 2006

By 

Michelle Grey (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (Hardcover)

I'm not generally a fantasy book afficionado, though I loved the Phillip Pullman books and grew up on Lord of the Rings, but when a friend recommended this book, I thought what the hell, I liked the cover and the first chapter was riveting in an odd and totally original way. Needless to say - I gobbled it up. The characters were fantastically vivid, and the whole imagined world so impressively conceived, I was literally on the edge of my seat. (I read a lot of it riding on the NY subway and found myself missing stops, and in one particular scene which I won't spoil for you, getting very red in the face...) It honestly didn't even feel long, the action moves incredibly fast - the writing had irony, wit and humor - it felt like fantasy wrapped in social satire - the glass books seemed to me to be an allegory for the dangerous force of all power hungry media structures that work on your base instincts and deprive you of your individuality, your critical mind, your creativity. I recommend this book to anyone who wants something really original.

54 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Really glad I bought this one, August 7, 2006

By 

J. R. SOUTH (Albany, New York USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (Hardcover)

I have a penchant for long, challenging novels, and "Glass Books" is certainly both. But don't let the words "long" & "challenging" discourage you from reading it. It is bizarre and unique, firmly rooted in a universal subconscious, both the author's and our own (by now you no doubt know that the creative impetus of the book sprung from a dream). It is also very visceral, a gothic mystery that you can totally get absorbed into.

After picking up and discouragingly putting down novel after novel looking for a great summer read (I also enjoyed last summer's Dracula epic, "The Historian"), I finally found a winner!

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The 'return' of the Victorian Sci Fi Thriller, August 4, 2006

By 

HH Cardigan (New York City, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters (Hardcover)

At last! Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle and the Marquis de Sade have risen from the grave and told us a story! Glass BOoks is basically a Victorian Sci Fi Thriller with a plot like a Nautilus shell. It twists and turns and keeps drawing you in deeper. You follow these three odd characters--a resourceful jilted fiancee, an assassin with a scarred face and a heart of gold, a whack job physician--as they pursue the central mystery: What is up with these blue glass books? There's some sort of process, involving women strapped to tables and some sort of political cabal and this weird blue glass that has the property of turning people into hopped up zombies, of a kind--much like our own television sets do, perhaps....
It all takes place in a sort of re-imagined late-19th century Europe. As if it comes to us through the filter of period literature. Velveteen boudoirs, dashing dragoons, hidden passages... It's deftly written and a wild read. In one nice trope, two brass-masked men see an act of violence witn "the dumb inconmprehension of inhabitants from the moon first witnessing the savagery of human kind," a trope that invokes Melies as much as Verne. Most of all it's a world you can live in, and don't want to leave anytime soon. Think MYST. If you've ever played, you'll see what I mean. The world's created, then you move about it in it and its got tricks and surprises and self-consistent rules.

I can't explain Glass Book's attraction by reference to any single other book, which is I think praise in itself. You'll have to read it.