Review: Beautiful writing.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 12, 2011
If I had to pick one word to describe Gods of Dream, it would definitely be lush.  Maybe vivid.  While fans of epic fantasy will find many well-loved and familiar threads here, it's the word usage and the description of the setting and characters that set this book apart.The story is familiar enough- a beautiful and beloved land is in danger of being overrun and ruined by a dark and evil land, and an unlikely choice of hero is chosen for a great quest.  In this case, our unlikely hero and heroine are a set of human twins named Tasha and Cade, and they receive help along the way from a series of ever more interesting allies.The story uses the dichotomy of Dream and Nightmare to illustrate the difference between the good side and the bad side, and the King of Nightmare, Phobetor, is one seriously creepy dude with a seriously grand chip on his shoulder.  His ultimate goal is to rule both Dream and Nightmare, even though such a thing is inherently impossible; it's up to Tasha and Cade to keep him from succeeding.By far my favorite part of this story was the word usage.  Everything is described so beautifully and so lushly that I can picture each scene perfectly in my mind.  There were lots of times that I stopped reading and just took a second to fully absorb the impact of the words arranged in that order.  I tweeted this line while I was reading the book, and it's still one of my favorites: "Colorful fish and crabs lived in the pools, and salt coated the edges of stones like sea-swept margaritas." Every page has an example like that, where the words rise up and erupt into a beautiful picture.Folks who have read Tolkien and other leaders of the epic fantasy world will definitely see a lot of familiar elements here, but I don't think that's a bad thing.  The Gods of Dream is a good example of how someone can so lovingly express devotion to an existing work or style while still creating something new and different.  I definitely think the writing style is more accessible here than in other fantasy works.  While there's plenty of fantasy language, by which I mean words and character names that are totally made up, the names are easy to figure out and the flow of the story isn't interrupted.