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A review by juushika
The Dust of Wonderland by Lee Thomas
1.0
Ken Nicholson returns to New Orleans after his son is hospitalized and encounters all of the mistakes and mysteries of his past. Years ago, he lived in a strange club called Wonderland which closed after the tragic events of a single night; now, its influences return to haunt Ken and threaten his family. This is, for me, an unusual review: I am reviewing the book without finishing it. I found The Dust of Wonderland so bad, with poor writing and ill-paced plot, that I was unable to finish it. As other reviews are uniformly positive, I feel obligated to provide a negative review to warn readers: some people may not enjoy this book or impossible to read. I don't recommend it.
Since I didn't finish this book, I can't properly critique it as a whole. Perhaps it contains carefully developed themes or characters that can only be appreciated over the course of the entire novel. What I do know, however, is the book's writing style: it is poorly written, rife with italicized flashbacks and thoughts, fragmented sentences, and passive voice. The flashbacks and Ken's thoughts serve to give the reader a peek into Ken's dark past and his terrified emotions, but they are amateur attempts which destroy the story's flow. Why Thomas uses fragmented sentences and passive voice, I'm not sure; they only serve to make it an effort to slog through each poorly written page, and they make the plot feel random and undirected.
The plot is similarly ill-written: the premise of a haunted past is interesting, but Thomas destroys his plot even as he builds it. Flashbacks give up too much information about the past and steal time from the present so that the current plotline seems to go nowhere. Moments of extreme violence, some of which are only hallucinations, begin so early and occur so frequently that they lose their impact. Ken is a passive protagonist (especially when narrated in passive voice), blundering into plot points and victim to his situation, and the reader quickly loses interest in—and track of—his story.
As evidenced by other reviews, some readers enjoy and appreciate The Dust of Wonderland. I don't hold it against them, but I also don't know what they see. Personally, I found this book disappointing and, more importantly, unreadable. I made it halfway through, but the writing style made it too painful to continue and, without any attachment to Ken or interest in his story, the plot gave me no reason to try. Therefore, I strongly recommend the reader against The Dust of Wonderland—this book is not as good as other reviews make it out to be.
Since I didn't finish this book, I can't properly critique it as a whole. Perhaps it contains carefully developed themes or characters that can only be appreciated over the course of the entire novel. What I do know, however, is the book's writing style: it is poorly written, rife with italicized flashbacks and thoughts, fragmented sentences, and passive voice. The flashbacks and Ken's thoughts serve to give the reader a peek into Ken's dark past and his terrified emotions, but they are amateur attempts which destroy the story's flow. Why Thomas uses fragmented sentences and passive voice, I'm not sure; they only serve to make it an effort to slog through each poorly written page, and they make the plot feel random and undirected.
The plot is similarly ill-written: the premise of a haunted past is interesting, but Thomas destroys his plot even as he builds it. Flashbacks give up too much information about the past and steal time from the present so that the current plotline seems to go nowhere. Moments of extreme violence, some of which are only hallucinations, begin so early and occur so frequently that they lose their impact. Ken is a passive protagonist (especially when narrated in passive voice), blundering into plot points and victim to his situation, and the reader quickly loses interest in—and track of—his story.
As evidenced by other reviews, some readers enjoy and appreciate The Dust of Wonderland. I don't hold it against them, but I also don't know what they see. Personally, I found this book disappointing and, more importantly, unreadable. I made it halfway through, but the writing style made it too painful to continue and, without any attachment to Ken or interest in his story, the plot gave me no reason to try. Therefore, I strongly recommend the reader against The Dust of Wonderland—this book is not as good as other reviews make it out to be.