The Dream Keeper by Mikey Brooks

December 4, 2013

The Dream Keeper by Mikey Brooks tells the story of Parker and Kaelyn, two teenagers who must work with Dream Keeper Gladamyr in order to defeat Fyren and save Dreams.  it is aimed at middle grade readers and to be perfectly honest I struggled to finish the book.  Harry Potter or Percy Jackson this is definitely not.  It is the first in a series, but I doubt I will be reading the next one.

What I liked

The concept.  I thought the concept was interesting and well thought out – sleeping humans being sent to either Mares or Favor and the impact an imbalance in those two realms could have.  I would have liked to have seen more of the impact of dream deprivation on the human population to show just how devastating that could be.  I did feel though that the author had the magic system well thought out and planned.

Gladamyr.  I felt this character was interesting and intriguing.  I liked his history and that it was his choices that made him what he is in the story.  

What I didn’t like

The writing style.  In fairness, I received an advanced readers copy of this book via Netgalley so some things may have been improved.  This was by far my biggest issue with the book.  The writing style was clumsy, contained grammatical errors and also metaphors that made no sense.  The vocabulary used was not extensive, although that may have been a conscious choice given the audience at which it is aimed.  

I felt also that the structure could have been improved.  For example on learning of a certain character’s disappearance we see Gladamyr’s reaction.  It’s only later that we see some of the relationship between the two to explain why he reacted in that way.  It would have been a much stronger scene in my opinion if we’d seen more of that relationship beforehand.

Bland main characters.  I felt Kaelyn and Parker were very much stock teenage characters.  While they were consistent and reasonably relatable there was little I found to distinguish them from all the other YA characters out there.  I felt more invested in Gladamyr than in these two.

All in all, I cannot in all honesty recommend The Dream Keeper.  Naturally you may have a different opinion, but I gave it two stars out of five.

 buy from Amazon, Kobo

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