Steven Harper - Dreamer

It is through first contact with an alien species that humanity learns of the Dream. It is a plane of mental existence where people are able to communicate by their thoughts alone--over distances of thousands of light-years. To ensure that future generations will have this ability, human genetic engineering produces newborns capable of finding and navigating the Dream.
They become known as the Silent.
Rust is just one planet among many in the Empire of Human Unity. It's nothing special, nothing unusual...except for the fact that it is home to an unknown boy who may be the most powerful Silent telepath ever born--a Silent with the ability to possess the bodies of others against their will. This mysterious child may be causing tremors within the Dream itself.
For now, only the Children of Irfan know about him. A monastic-like order of the Silent, the Children protect their members even as they barter their services with the governments and corporations that control known space. But power like that cannot be hidden, and soon every Silent in the universe will know about the boy--and every government will be willing to go to war to control him.
And if the Children of Irfan cannot find him first, the Dream itself may be shattered...

Comment: Last year I've read and liked Nightmare by this author. At that time, I read that book because it was part of a series (The Silent Empire) and many readers kept suggesting that book should be read before Dreamer, because chronologically the events in Nightmare occurred before those in Dreamer. 

I've decided to follow that advice and what a good one, for I've found this one to be slightly convoluted and having the base of what was going on from the other book helped a lot.

Kendi, the hero from the first book, is now older and has studied enough to become a Brother, which means he can do his own investigations in the attempt to help other Silent people. On planet Rust, he and the others are looking for someone who seems to have a powerful ability in the Dream, the place where all of those who are Silent can communicate. But this person's abilities don't seem to be controlled and fearing a war, the Empress to which the Children of Irfan answer to, demands that this individual has to be captured. While Kendi and his friends know they will help as much as they can, someone else is after this person and who knows what will happen if the enemy can manipulate them at will...

As I've said, I did like Nightmare a lot. It wasn't a perfect read but there were plenty elements to win me over and, of course, I was hoping to have the same experience with this one. I will say it was as adventurous and creative to me as the first, but some plot choices definitely disappointed. I think a few things happened for shock factor and while I was able to maintain a certain emotional distance, it still annoyed me terribly that some characters had determined fate.

I will repeat that it was a good option to not read the series in order of publication. This book has a lot of information which makes so much more sense after reading the other. In fact, now I cannot imagine starting with this, I would likely not carry on. There are moments that yes, I feel that it was as if the author assumed the readers would easily follow the ideas described, and some don't always make a lot of sense. Having read Nightmare not only make me more interested in what was happening but also invested in some of the characters (thus my disappointment, I suppose one cannot have it all).

To summarize, in this world there are people/beings who are Silent, meaning they can kind of access a dream world and what they do there does affect "real life". As expected a lot in society is dependent on these people and, as well, there are those who would benefit from the opposite. Basically, the plot of this book is precisely that: someone with an uncontrolled power needs be caught before it's impossible to reverse a terrible situation in the Dream world, but someone wants the Dream to disappear.

Kendi and his friends are still key characters and Kendi is happy he became a Brother because this allows him to travel and he desperately wants to find his family who, like himself, were sold into slavery. I still liked Kendi a lot despite discovering one little thing about him I disliked. Nothing can only suit the preferences of one, isn't it, but even then I was glad he was still the same curious and likable boy I had met in the other book. I think the end of the book, despite the negative situations faced by everyone, also make me confident I will keep on rooting for him.

The plot was captivating, fast paced and included many amazing descriptions, some things more than others of course, and the reason behind the major problems ongoing was quite ingenious but I will say that while I understand the need to develop things in a way that would make some sense, my personal taste is one for positivism and I was annoyed at the amount of scenes where characters managed to accomplish wrong decisions instead! I kept thinking why some characters couldn't be smarter... such as Sejal, the individual everyone is looking for. I can understand he didn't have all the knowledge and he was rather immature, but... how frustrating.

Since this Sejal was "conveniently" easy to manipulate, despite some promising scenes at a certain point, the villain still got to him. I'd say the villain was pretty basic in how villains are, in terms of motivation and characterization, but considering what happens and how some characters were deeply affected by the villain's actions, it's obvious I ended up despising him. Surely, this is the whole point, but it still gets on my nerves how some characters had to suffer and not even the possibility something will be redeemed in the next books will change things for me.

I think this fantasy world is engaging and I liked the overall notion of it. I now some readers thought it to be a little pretentious but to me, most of the construction worked out well, because it offered the necessary for things to have meaning. I'm not particularly interested if the idea "x" is better than the idea "y", what I want is a world to make sense and to want to see what happens next. In this regard, I think the author accomplished it, and I will read the third book next month.

Grade: 7/10