Title: The Dreamers
Author: Karen Thompson Walker
Publisher: Random House
Rating: 📖📖📖📖/ 5
The small town of Santa Lora, California is soon rocked when news spreads that students on the local college campus are mysteriously falling asleep and cannot wake up. Soon the number of sleeping rises and spreads throughout the town, but no one can figure out why. But what they do find out is that the afflicted are dreaming more deeply than has ever been been studied. The Dreamers follows various characters in the town affected by the sickness and gives multiple points of view to add a depth to the already complicated story.
If I were to describe the types of books I often pick up, it would be obvious that I love a good science-y mystery. A mysterious disease where people randomly fall asleep and can't be roused? I'm all over it. That's why after reading the book jacket I knew I had to pick up The Dreamers from the library. And I certainly wasn't disappointed. Unlike the typical "rampant disease" story where the death toll rises quickly, Walker weaves a situation where the illness in question is peaceful. There is no bloodshed and often, especially in the beginning stages, nobody can tell who is just sleeping and who is ill. Such confusion is often more scary than the typical mass infection. At the same time, the illness itself is not all that interesting. I hesitate to say it, but nothing really happens. The patients either die or wake up. There is no real resolution and no reason why it happened in the first place. I understand that it adds to the mystery to end it this way, but it's also very disappointing.
Walker's writing style is amazing. The way she weaves the story through the different characters' experiences really lends a different level of storytelling to the events of the story. The reader can really feel the emotions and understand the thought process of the characters as opposed to the typical disaster story. The story is more focused on the people involved rather than the disease itself and it is a breath of fresh air. Even if not much happens action-wise in the book. Overall, The Dreamers is an intriguing story in an often oversaturated and over-played "plague" genre. I would recommend it to basically any reader as, even though it a story of a spreading disease, there is no gore or anything that would turn many readers away.
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