Review: Good Fantasy Novel; The Dream Crystal
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 23, 2011
** I received this book from the author in exchange for an honest review **I enjoyed reading The Dream Crystal.  I like fantasy, and its not something that I have read a whole lot of, but I did enjoy reading this.  Mark does a fantastic job of transporting you into the world of the fairies.  There are 3 actual worlds, the dream world, the shadow world, and the human world and they mirror each other geographically, since they're more like alternate dimensions.There were a lot of characters, and sometimes they got a little bit confusing, and some of the names are a little hard to pronounce, but luckily, there is a handy dandy appendix in the back with the cast of characters and how to pronounce the troubling names.  I also struggled with whether I liked some of the characters, my biggest struggle being Aisling.  She's very proud and passionate, and she seems very into herself and her looks at certain points, which made me unsure of whether I really liked her.  But as the story went on, she grew on me.  Also, because Aisling wants to become a fashion designer, there is a lot of attention to detail about what the characters are wearing.  In most of the scenes there was a description of the characters and everything that they were wearing.I also liked the emphasis put on the Celtic history and the occurrence of Gaelic phrases throughout the book.  My family being Irish, I could really appreciate this and I thought that it really added to the novel.However, I did feel at times that the story dragged because of all of the detail that was put in and it just didn't feel like it was important to the story line at times.  At times there was also an overwhelming amount of things happening in each chapter, so sometimes I had to backtrack to make sure that I understood what was going on.  Also, as previously stated, the vast cast of characters also created some confusion.Overall, it was a good story, with a good plot, good characters.  The writing was solid, but a little less attention to detail might do well in the future.  I recommend this book to lovers of fantasy, especially if you like faeries.  I give this novel a solid 3.5 out of 5!