reviews

A Review of
A Season of Strange Dreams
by John Grant

(John Grant has written more than 60 books. Eighteen of them are fantasy novels, including Albion and The World. He also jointly edited The Encyclopedia of Fantasy for which he received the Hugo Award in 1998, and he is a winner of the World Fantasy Award.
***

"An astonishing tour de force of noir fantasy, characterized by some of the most beautifully lyrical, atmospheric writing I've come across in a long while. Chris Thompson skilfully blends the mean streets with the streets of dreams in this highly evocative concoction, offering the reader bafflement, dazzlement, gritty hard-boiled realism, wonder and astonishment in turn -- but always delight. A Season of Strange Dreams will remain in your mind long after you've turned the final page."

A Review of
A Season of Strange Dreams
by Alan Rogers
***

Dreams baffle scientists, mystics and philosophers alike but, with A Season of Strange Dreams, C.S. Thompson invites you to explore an urban playground of fantastic nightmares destined to keep you well awake. The surreal opening pages of A Season of Strange Dreams take you into the world of Jim Rankin, a borderline alcoholic and occultist known as Noctigivanti: the Sleepwalker.

A story began in medias res, disjointed scenes connected by the barest hint of continuity drag you through the first chapter or so of the novel, until Jim first meets the beautiful and enigmatic Rose, a young stripper with 'late-twilight blue eyes' on a bus to Nottamun. Jim draws comfort from her presence until he sees she carries a knife and starts wondering if she is one of Them, whoever They are.

As Jim arrives in Nottamun, A Season of Strange Dreams begins to read a lot like it's a sequel to an earlier book as, we learn that some five years before, this is where Jim first discovered 'night-wandering' - the means of entering the Fringe.

The story begins to pick up pace and coherency as Jim searches for Mark, a local gangster who had frequented Nottamun when he first discovered night-wandering and occultism. Jim's adventures and misadventures in Nottamun escalate as he visits a hermit named Benjamin, spends the night with Rose in the bottom floor of an abandoned school inhabited by 'night children' and meets a psychic cab driver, narrowly escaping death as he attempts to night-wander and discover what is afoot in the town of Nottamun.

Rescued by Mark, slowly he begins to put the pieces together, echoes of past battles with a Satanist known only as the 'tall man' whispering to him through the night shadows. As the dark mists of the night-wanderers swirl around him, Jim, believing his friends dead, commits himself to killing Devil Joe before he and his cronies kill him. Lines like: "You work magic with cheap wine and speed pills?" characterize Thompson's sparse style and lack of detail, which gives Nottamun a gritty, razor-edged realism of endless supplies of cheap booze and even cheaper criminals without the morals to help their grandmothers cross the street.

There are not many authors, even in the gothic urban fantasy genres who dare to handle the darker sides of insanity and the occult as brazenly as Thompson does. Matter-of-fact eroticism and blunt statements of blood and mutilation give a disturbingly clinical feel to the battles and dizzying plot twists. Unfortunately, Thompson's handling of the fantasy elements of his plot is not as adroit; although the occultism is very real and very dark, the cosmology of the Fringe itself and how it is connected to our reality is vague at best, making some of the story threads very difficult to understand.

Many of the connections Jim makes, based on previous occult battles leave the reader feeling like they have missed something - as if this is the second instalment in a much longer epic. The introduction of the demonic abyssal lord, Hungers-for-Flesh midway through the book confuses many of the issues Jim has been dealing with and makes the previous, already incomplete, cosmology seem even more baffling. Also, it's not until nearly the end of the story that the reader discovers some of the Paramount's subjects have been in rebellion.

The whole tale leaves you a bit breathless and bewildered. A Season of Strange Dreams is one of those stories that stays with you at night when you lay down to sleep. It leaves you wondering what lies behind your dreams, what battles are fought while you sleep.