Land of Dreams

by James P. Blaylock

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0441503470
• ISBN13: 9780441503476
• Release Date: September 1988
• Publisher: Ace Books
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The Wonders of Summer Solstice

Step right up, Ladies and Gents, Girls and Boys. Here is the head of Medusa Gorgon. (For your own safety, keep your eyes on the mirror.) On that stage are the Seven Sisters of the Pleiades dancing for your enjoyment. Over here is Merlin in his crystal grotto. Perhaps he will perform some magic. Splashing in this tank of water is a baby Loch Ness monster. And hunkering in this canal is a Martian Troglodite. Yes, Folks, there are a _thousand_ things to see. A thousand things! But beware of sinister ringmasters dressed in black. And that ride, on those tracks... Will it take you through the Tunnel of Love... Or into the bowels of the Haunted Castle? For you don't always get what you want. Sometimes you get what you deserve. Carnivals (or circuses) and fantasy. It seems to be a natural, almost surefire blend. There are certainly a number of stories and novels in which it has been attempted. But most of them don't do it very well. Somehow, the execution doesn't match the promise. James P. Blaylock's _Land of Dreams_ (1987) is a carnival fantasy. And no, it doesn't deliver all that it promises. But it comes close. Very close. It is one of the best books of its kind that I have read. The setting is a small northern California coastal town in the late nineteenth century. It is the twelve year Solstace, and all of a sudden strange wonders occur, including (but not limited to): a giant pair of spectacles, an enormous waterlogged shoe, a tiny man wearing the mask of a mouse, a crow with a walking stick, strange fish in the sea, an elderly ghost, and a dark carnival train that can travel over collapsed bridges. The heroes are three orphan children, two boys and a girl, who investigate many of these goings-on. What they find is that a great many people in both the carnival and in the town know a lot about at least some of the wonders. "Maybe they're not _going_ anyplace," says one of the heroes, "but they're _up_ to something" (78). They are involved in a number of projects. Some are benevolent, but many are malicious-- even evil. Blaylock has a vivid imagination and a sense of the poetic that allows him toss off passages like this: Twelve years ago, the taxidermist's son had gone mad after eating Solstice fish, and for days had spoken in the voices of long-dead townspeople. In the moonlight it had seemed as if the boy _looked_ like the corpses of the people whose voices he mimicked, and the taxidermist, whose business never amounted to much in the first place, had put away his glass eyes and stuffing and set himself up as a spiritualist in one of the carnival tents. (38) At other times, Blaylock displays a Bradburyesque love of Halloween: At the same moment that a cloud shadow cast the alley into darkness, he saw the tilted shape of a black scarecrow silhouetted against the whitewashed wall of a lean-to shed, the wind blowing the straw-stuffed arms of the thing back and forth as if they were hinged. He could hear it rustling. He stopped and stood stil

A MAGIC THAT STAYS

While Land of Dreams works admirably as a supernatural thriller (the Solstice heralds a series of weird events, including the return of a sinister carnival, with diabolical results for the people of a northern California coastal town) and as an adventure yarn (three orphans face great perils as they unravel the mystery of the Solstice, the carnival, and the fabled Land of Dreams), the novel ultimately--through Blaylock's visionary prose--transcends both of these genres. This book shares a virtue with the greatest works of Fantasy: the ability to open our eyes to the magic at work within our everyday lives. Doughnuts, old shoes, rainswept afternoons, fiddler crabs ... in Land of Dreams such commonplace things are transformed into vehicles of wonder, into nothing less than keys that just might open doors to the Other Side (for readers uninterested in the Other Side, or those who haven't the faintest idea of what I mean by the Other Side, a warning: stay clear of rabbit holes and the books of James P. Blaylock). And while conventional supernatural and adventure novels are content to take the reader from point A to point B (in which conflict unfolds), and then to point C (where said conflict is resolved and mystery explained), Land of Dreams celebrates the wonder of the journey itself rather than in the rushing toward denouement. His inimitable prose style and (what some might perceive as) eccentric sensibility create an atmosphere of enchantment totally unique to Blaylock. Few contemporary Fantasy novels merit more than one reading--like a magician's trick revealed, a punchline delivered, there is little to draw the reader back for a return visit--but Land of Dreams possesses something quite rare: a magic that stays (to which I can attest, having read this novel several times over the years), Blaylock's artistry undiminished over successive reads (it's really that good).

Go to any lengths to find this glorious dream of a book!

Read any novel by James Blaylock and I predict that you will end up musing about his unique characters, worlds, and images off and on in a dreamlike way for a very long time after finishing the last pages. I may be slightly biased in favor of Land of Dreams particularly among his books, since it was the first I read. I picking it up largely by a chance selection from a pile of new science-fiction/fantasy paperbacks at a large chain bookstore, never having heard of him before. As I learned that night turning page after page after page, Blaylock's writing is not science fiction. For that matter, most of his novels have a flavor hardly hinted at by the word "fantasy". Land of Dreams is, like many of Blaylock's California novels, set in a coastal community where the boundary between mundane life and the brilliance of new mysteries keeps fraying. Appealing characters, scintillating language, hilarious dialogue and observation, and a sense of the weird and wonderful are what I have come to expect when I am lucky enough to read or re-read something by James Blaylock. Whiffs of Robert Louis Stevenson, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R. Tolkien, Baron Munchausen, and Lord knows how many other great story-tellers and writers can be sniffed in the cheery and fragrant clouds from Blaylock's story pipe, but his creations are his alone. I believe he will be remembered as a great fantasist and stylist. He is among the few great fabulists now writing who truly delights in laughter and puzzlement. .I hope others read him, and recommend him to others as strongly as I do. I hope to write more about his other works in the future....but for now...try to find Land of Dreams