The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Author: Gordon Dahlquist

Pages: 768 (hardcover)

I’ve been meaning to review this for a long time – and having just finished its sequel, The Dark Volume, it seems like as good a time as any to finally get around to it.

Some interesting financial data, to begin with: according to this (and various other stories I’ve read) the author was paid $2 million for the two-book deal. The initial print run was 120,000 books, of which 22,000 sold. Publisher’s Weekly reported that the first printing was actually less than that – they went back to press for more copies even before the on-sale date due to positive response from booksellers.

Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure what to think of the book the first time I read it. The story of it sounded immensely interesting but it was more unrelenting than any other book I’d read; the action literally did not stop and there weren’t really any breaks in between, even – many books will give you a trivial scene or a few pages of narrative summary so the reader can “breathe.” The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters takes place over a period of I think three days, despite its considerable length, and I definitely did not feel like I was allowed to “breathe” at any point.

But the unique style grew on me as I read it, and particularly after I’d finished it. It may have been an epic failure financially but the editors who acquired it must have seen something they liked and I’m inclinced to agree with them.

The story begins with Miss Temple, as she recieves a letter from her fiancee breaking off their engagement. Unable to accept it without discovering the reason, she sets off to get to the bottom of the business – but she soon gets entangled in the rather intricate plots that revolve around the blue glass tomes from which book gets its title.

Cardinal Chang and Doctor Svenson each get roughly a third of the book devoted to them, too – the storyline alternates between the three, devoting a fairly large section to each before ending it with an annoyingly tantalizing cliffhanger and switching to the next character. It ends up being a significant number of pages before you get back to resolve the cliffhanger – by which time you’re usually concerned with the other two cliffhangers you’ve just been fed and have nearly put the first one out of your mind.

There’s one other thing I should mention. There’s a rare break from the action when Miss Temple has tea and it is the most spectacular tea-drinking scene I’ve ever read. It spans two and a half pages and would very likely be enough to make me like the book all on its own.