Customer Reviews

Tower of Dreams

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4 star:		(2)
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Jamil Nasir takes the reader on a fascinating journey into a future Middle Eastern culture where the images crafted by the master writer are both disturbing and compelling. The protagonist is Blaine Ramsey, an Arab American, on assignment in the Jordan Valley as an "image digger." His job involves immersing himself in the culture of the area, tapping into the collective unconsciousness, and dreaming culturally provocative images for sale to Western advertisers. While there, he dreams of a beautiful and seductive Arab girl who is brutally beaten as the dream turns to nightmare. His obsessive pursuit of this mysterious girl takes him into the dangers of a future Cairo where earthquakes rumble daily, traffic jams dictate travel after midnight, and murderous riots are commonplace.

Nasir has produced a tense drama that keeps the reader immersed in his own gritty, seductive image of a near-future world where computers, religion, and unbridled capitalism clash to form a backdrop for his character's chivalrous pursuit of elusive beauty and romanace.

Tower of Dreams is about what makes a dream; or moreaccurately, what happens to the dream-maker when his powers ofconstruction are subsumed by a near-jungian super dream? This is the narrative fate of Blaine Ramsey when he goes to jordan to research and construct atmosphere for his Madison Avenue Ad company, an outfit which packages dreams as so much subliminal sense-data for consumers.

Tower of Dreams is so much more than that, however; ToD represents a daring journey into the Arab culture and the dangers of cross-over when an Egyptian movie star loses her grip on reality and fame at the turn of the millennium. All the forces of anti-Western sentiment come into sharp focus as sterile, rational thought gets challenged by emotional and psychological populist forces like eroticism and faith. All in all, a compelling story, a vibrant profile of a rapidly changing segment of the world, and a good character novel, to boot.

We loved this book. The whole concept of the protagonist being a market researcher who could see architypes was so Philip K. Dickian! And as a side, we enjoyed learning more from the perspective of a person of middle-eastern heritage. This was a great read. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves science fiction or urban fantasy.

Jamil Nasir has combined several extremely alluring aspects into this hard-driving and mind-bending thriller.

I truly relished being immersed in Nasir's too tranquil setting of Kraima, Jordan and the superheated self-destructing Cairo. His evocative details of life in the Middle East create a most realistic and delicious setting for his deeper concerns.

Likewise, his powerful concept of mining the collective unconscious for super potent images that will enhance advertising and strongly manipulate the unawares is an intriguing suggestion of what our future might well hold.

Our hero, Blaine Ramsey, is adept in both of these arenas, dutifully doing his job as a somewhat staid image digger until one particular image begins to dangerously control his awareness.

The characterization is wonderfully handled as Blaine seeks out the source of his distraction and gradually abandons his rigid constraints in the pursuit of the unobtainable Buthaina.

When the intense clash of personalities and events has finally run its course we are left with a touching sense of wonder, and much to ponder.

Highly recommended!

Nasir says "...as a native Arab I had found most sf portrayals of the
Middle East to be the most astonishing malarkey. I wanted to write about the region as it really is: hot, jostling, ancient, and human-intense, and about the luminous inner awareness awakened by its blinding days and jasmine nights, its silent ruins baking the stillness of orange groves."

The story begins in a simple hut on the Jordan River. Blaine Ramsey is a
"digger" who prospects for compelling subconscious images for use in
advertising. He finds his dreams and even his days haunted by an Egyptian film goddess. He travels to Cairo to pursue his vision.

The mystery of Ramsey's goddess/actress is revealed, if not explained,
against the exotic, tumultuous Cairo urban landscape. For readers of American science fiction, Jamil Nasir's travelogue in this book should be as strange and exciting as any trip to an alien planet.

This book is gorgeously written, intellectually provocative, and very atmospheric. It's the kind of book you read slowly to make it last longer. An excellent entertainment.

This is not just science fiction in the usual way of inventing/presenting future technologies - here a forefront of the evolution of consciousness is an even more significant factor. To this end Nasir doesn't merely describe, he opens up a newly discovered world of cognition (or is it a re-discovered connection with that of the ancients, or a blending of both?). Whatever it may seem to you to be, as he describes it, he simultaneously - and with great skill and fluidity - teaches us about it.

Here Nasir's images are not just cinematic but synaesthetic, for not only do sights, sounds and feelings overflow his canvas, but smells and tastes amply extrude. 'Tower of Dreams' provides the reader with a continuous stream of images, displaying as much or more attention to sensuous and emotional detail as did Zola and the realists; but also including as much imagistic intensity as Baudelaire and the symbolists. From the sordid to the surreal to the sublime, Mr. Nasir never lets up, whether describing the real world of flesh and bone, or one of its twin worlds within a dream. His craft is such that the two (or three, or more worlds) seem as if they effortlessly co-mingle.

And there is symbol building going on, sometimes at an almost furious rate. Some are small, others are large enough for multitudes to walk into and live, breathe and die there; then there are the characters themselves. I'm not calling this an allegory - it's deeper and more energetic than that. Some of the characters, particularly Aida, telescope in and out of different dimensions so many times that all manner of psychic material begins to adhere and resonate, larger than life, or even death.

What's most telling is the way there seems to be this invisible underlying energy, or call it text, that weaves through everything and animates it from within. It's like being held in the coils of a dragon, or alternately the thread of a sutra or holy verse, as it is both subtle and supple, but also sinuous and powerfully revealing.

There are many glimpses of a magnificent presence and dramatic grandeur like we find in the epic and lyric poets, and the great tragedians. As one keeps reading, aesthetic flavor continues to mount; the whole gradually acquires an ever-moving, spiritual presence. And the ending itself is simply put . . .

It's really a pity that this has to have gone out of print, as it's really more than a genre piece.