Reviews

Dream London by Tony Ballantyne

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invisibleninjacat's review

2.0

The writing was fine, but there author made a lot of boring choices when it came to choosing how to change London into Dream London. In a book where Dream London literally warps reality so that buildings move and grow daily and an orange frog the size of a person comes to Dream London to learn how to be human, nearly every woman is a whore, a housewife, or a mother. He could have made literally any other decision (women transforming into trees, into statisticians, into anything really), and he chose that. Non-white characters are explicitly being reduced to stereotypes of their cultures. Further, the main character is a pimp who claims he isn't really, who naturally avoided dishonorable discharge for being involved with his commander's daughter, and who might be involved with underage girls. And he's presented as a hero/anti-hero of Dream London. Really?

secre's review

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2.0

I wanted to enjoy this. I really, really wanted to enjoy this. But in reality, I didn't. The idea of a London that is constantly changing to some unknown organisations whims and ideals was really quite interesting and yet the execution of the descriptions along with the actual plot simply failed to thrill or really engage me.

The plot itself bumped along but didn't actively bring me along with it... things move quite quickly but half the time you don't seem to understand what's moving or why and what is actually going on. Then when you find things out they make no bleeding sense or stretch the bounds of reasonable belief way beyond my little feeble mind. The big villain isn't really a villain, the real villain is just weird and the foul mouthed child creature who likes to threaten obscene sexual punishments failed to make me uncomfortable after about two or three lines from her. It got stale quickly.

On top of that, all of the characters seemed pretty much 2D and were more interested in telling you what they are like rather than being that in actual action. So you are told - lots of times - what the main characters character is but you don't actually see it in action a lot. It makes the entire thing rather bland and the characters don't ever seem to leap off the page and accost you with their brilliance.

All in all, disappointing and somewhat of a plod, despite the fact that it's the weirdest book I have read in a long time.

ossian's review

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adventurous dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

mackle13's review

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2.0

I've been sitting on this review for awhile because I'm not really sure what to say about it...

This is a Weird London book which puts much emphasis on the 'weird' part, and a bit less on character development and coherent storytelling. I suppose some of this fits with the whole "dream" aspect of the story - but I've read stories which read like dreams, and this didn't really fit the bill. The writing itself is pretty standard fare, to be honest - it's the events themselves which create the weirdness, and some of them are sort of so outre it's like "da fuq?". I mean

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ants?

Really?

But this story also tries to be a kind character growth story, and James Wedderburn does go through some changes throughout the story. (The ending vaguely made me think of 'Fight Club' (the movie, as I've never read the book), and I did think the fact that he wasn't

Spoiler

all that involved with the actual ending of the story was interesting. A study in the way people might think they're the hero of a particular story, but aren't, really.

The sad thing is that the character was actually much more interesting to read about before he grew a conscience. Go fig.

That said, I was a bit annoyed, in the beginning, with the very sexist tones of the book. Dream London, you see - for reasons I'm not sure where ever entirely explained - reverts to a Victorian sort of system where women could only ever seem to be mothers or whores. Luckily this is commented on and somewhat dismissed as the story progresses, which I was thankful for.

But, then, aside from being a morality play, it also dabbles into social commentary and, frankly, gets strangely preachy by the end. I mean, it's not that I particularly disagreed with any of the points being raised, but it's always annoying to not glean a moral lesson from the story, but to have a character pretty much give a sermon is just off-putting - even if one agree with what's being said.

All in all, I think it tried to be too many things, a story of parts more than a whole, and none of them ever really came together into something better than "ok".

authentically_april's review

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2.0

Intriguing story idea; clumsy (and at times disturbing) execution. I was often sidetracked thinking too much time was being wasted going for the shock factor. There was a bit of nice character development, but overall my high hopes for the premise of this novel were dashed, and Dream London was nowhere near as interesting as I expected to find it.

gobblebook's review

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2.0

This has a promising premise, and got off to an interesting start... But then a bunch of stuff happened and none of it really made any sense or meant anything and then the book was over. I was hoping that there would be some point to it all, but if there was, I couldn't find it. You could remove any given scene from the book and it wouldn't make any difference to how the book turned out or how much/little sense the book made. One of the biggest annoyances was the narrator's grappling with his own identity. This could and should have been the interesting crux of the book. The narrator, Captain Jim Wedderburn, is constantly talking about the kind of person Captain Jim Wedderburn is, and how to act like Captain Jim Wedderburn. But sometimes he just wants to be plain James Wedderburn. However, there is never any exposition of how he got to be Captain Jim Wedderburn - how did that persona come about? Why does he have this split personality? And then, towards the end of the book, he has to give up his identity as Captain Jim Wedderburn... except he totally doesn't. He then, in more than one scene, says, "I have to act like Captain Jim Wedderburn one more time." Shouldn't that annul the deal he made where he gave up his identity? And what does it mean to him to give up that identity? Something momentous, apparently, but it is never made clear. So all in all, this book had some interesting concepts, but was very poorly executed.