With a page count almost twice as long as this book, it's hardly surprising that there was far more character development. Sleeping Beauties was not a fast-paced book, but I felt very drawn into the drama. The major difference, I feel, is in how much we are pulled into the characters lives. The Dreamers' premise is virtually identical to King's Sleeping Beauties, except here the sleeping sickness can affect men and appears to be contagious. It is written in third person and moves through small chapters - vignettes, almost - with many different people who I never felt a connection to. There's this sense that you are looking down on everything from a distance through a haze.
In fact, right now, I can't actually think of one. I can count on one hand the amount of books where this style has worked for me. This book is full of dreamy hypnotic prose. As it turns out, my review of her debut is fairly similar to how I feel about The Dreamers, comma splices aside. I read Walker's The Age of Miracles more than six years ago, didn't love it, but wanted to give her another try. I'm rating this purely based on my personal enjoyment and connection with the narrative.
These days, science doesn’t take much interest in dreams.Ģ½ stars. They are dreaming heightened dreams-but of what? Those infected are displaying unusual levels of brain activity, more than has ever been recorded. A psychiatrist, summoned from Los Angeles, attempts to make sense of the illness as it spreads through the town. And at the hospital, a new life grows within a college girl, unbeknownst to her-even as she sleeps. A father succumbs to the illness, leaving his daughters to fend for themselves. Two visiting professors try to protect their newborn baby as the once-quiet streets descend into chaos. Mei, an outsider in the cliquish hierarchy of dorm life, finds herself thrust together with an eccentric, idealistic classmate. As the number of cases multiplies, classes are canceled, and stores begin to run out of supplies. Then a second girl falls asleep, and then another, and panic takes hold of the college and spreads to the town.
Neither can the paramedics who carry her away, nor the perplexed doctors at the hospital.
She sleeps through the morning, into the evening. In an isolated college town in the hills of Southern California, a freshman girl stumbles into her dorm room, falls asleep-and doesn’t wake up.
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