Jonah and Clay live in the city of Bridgeport and have
recently been brought together – by an abandoned factory. It haunts their
dreams with horrors, it looms constantly in their consciousness. When they pass
it they hear ominous music that fills their minds, and even standing opposite
it they feel compelled and pulled towards it. They can feel the menace and
horror of it but cannot resist it.
They try to research it, but inevitably are drawn inside in
the face of its escalating influence in their lives – and the greater threat it
poses.
Inside the factory they find a gateway to a whole new
world, a world that impacts everything around them. It’s through the looking
glass but far darker and the difference between dreams and reality seems to be fuzzy
in the extreme – to say nothing of what reality is in the city of Bridgeport?
What is real – and, more telling, who is real? How much of their memories and
history are real? And what is actually behind this force in their lives and
what is its agenda.
This book is elegantly crafted. The prose is beautiful,
evocative and nearly poetic. Every description is carefully and artfully put
together. We have amazingly vivid and detailed dream sequences that add to the
aura of menace and add volumes to the setting – the books theme of the surreal,
the weird, the dark and of reality not truly being real and of vast dark forces
that are not only unknown, but possible even unknowable.
The characters are also extremely detailed. We have a lot
of their backstories, their inner thoughts, what makes them tick. We see their
attitudes, how they’ve been shaped, their histories, their desires. Along with
the dreams, we have stories and experiences that further build to the dark,
gritty theme, the strong sense of other. All of the surreality of it, the
dream-like nature and the grimness gives it an almost Alice Through the Looking
Glass feel – but far far darker.
If you like all this, the evocative descriptions, the
heavy foreshadowing, the powerfully crafted scenes and the incredibly
maintained theme that permeates every page then you will love this book.
Unfortunately, for me, none of these elements are
remotely positive enough to balance the book’s terrible pacing. All these
descriptions, the backstory, the foreshadowing, the insight is wonderfully
thematic and world setting and character developing but it completely drowns
the plot. I can respect the theme – I’m impressed by it. And I love how it
raised the idea of reality not being what the characters though, of the
dream-like feel and definitely the “through the rabbit hole” feel of the book.
But it was slow. No matter how much I am impressed by the excellent writing,
the world and the theme, it doesn’t change that I was bored waiting for things
to actually happen, waiting for the foreshadowing. I appreciate the artistry of
it, but I didn’t enjoy it.
