Imagine that every moment of your life has been observed and documented by one of the many Aspects of Nature. Now imagine that, when you die you are chosen by one of these Aspects to do the documentation. This is the story of The Dream Recorder.
Abby George is new to the Afterlife, having just passed after a long illness. She and her mentor, Gregory Peel, visit the living and record their dreams for the Aspect of Dreams. As Gregory shows her around her new plane of existence, an accident traps them in the Dreamscape with no way to escape.
Imagine that every moment of your life has been observed and documented by one of the many Aspects of Nature. Now imagine that, when you die you are chosen by one of these Aspects to do the documentation. This is the story of The Dream Recorder.
Abby George is new to the Afterlife, having just passed after a long illness. She and her mentor, Gregory Peel, visit the living and record their dreams for the Aspect of Dreams. As Gregory shows her around her new plane of existence, an accident traps them in the Dreamscape with no way to escape.
Nighttime.
They say that nighttime is when half the world is asleep. Sleep is from where most dreams come. And dreams are what Gregory does for a living.
The night our story begins, Gregory did what he always did, what heâd been doing for a long time now. He entered the bedroom of his latest charge, as quiet as dust upon the floor, pulled up a chair, seemingly created out of thin air. Gregory got himself comfortable, got out his pad and pen, took off his glasses and placed them in his pocket. He then adjusted a pair of goggles on his face, and watched as wisps of dreams, made visible by the goggles, wafted away from his charge, and waited to document the dream.
Gregory is a Dream Recorder, and he is very good at it. He has been doing this for the better part of 80 years, ever since he left a corporeal existence. Now, Gregory wasnât always like this. He was once human, just like the person he was in charge of observing tonight, simply called Dreamers by Gregory and those like him.
He had dreams of his own. When he was a young boy, he dreamt of being a police officer, like his father. When he became a man, he answered his countryâs call and fought in the Great War. During the war, he dreamt of home and the girl he left behind there.
After his time in the war was over, he was too hurt to become a policeman, so, he became a security guard in a bank, something he thought was the next best thing. He continued to dream. He dreamt of being a writer. He even got some stories published in his local newspaper, which brought him some notoriety, so he continued to write and continued to dream. His dreams made him perfect for the Aspect of Dreams to choose him as one of the Dream Recorders when he passed from the corporeal world.
In all the time Gregory had been recording dreams for the Aspect of Dreams, he hadnât observed the same charge twice. There were, after all, billions of people to look after. Tonightâs Dreamer was the quiet sort. Gregory liked that. He disliked snorers, especially the loud ones. They made watching and recording dreams a bit of a chore.
Gregory watched as the wisps rose from his Dreamer, a man in his mid-to-late 30s. They coalesced and showed images of an attractive young woman with grayish-green eyes, shoulder-length platinum blonde hair, and a bright smile, looking back at him in apparent amazement. Behind her were several dozen other people in what seemed like an auditorium. The Dreamer showed a man choosing him and his companion and giving them the photograph of a man they both recognized as a popular actor, whose most famous role was that of a fictional detective. It seemed that the man on stage charged them with finding the murderer of, not the actor, but the fictional detective he played. Several scenes passed, where the Dreamer and his companion ran through a school and an apartment complex, they found the mastermind behind the murder, the actor himself.
After Gregory witnessed an explosion in the Dreamerâs dream, a voice came from the corner of the Dreamerâs room.
âOi! Scribbles!â said the voice.
Gregory made no indication that he heard the voice, and continued documenting the dream.
âAnyfinâ interestinâ goinâ on in this oneâs âead?â the voice asked.
Gregory let out an audible sigh.
âCâmon, Scribbles, you know I canât read dis,â the voice said from behind Gregoryâs ear. âWaâs goinâ on?â
âYou know I canât tell you that, Centure, even if I could read it, which I canât,â said Gregory.
âArr, I could never getcha to bend those rules yet, ay?â said Centure. â50 years of knowingâ ya, Scribbles, and still the olâ soldier.â
âGo away, please, Centure. Iâm busy.â
A loud flatulent sound came from Centureâs general location. It must have been audible to the Dreamer, because the images Gregory was recording disappeared, and had become wisps again.
Gregory let out an exasperated sigh.
âCenture! Was that really necessary?â said Gregory, as he looked toward Centureâs location, and saw nothing. Gregory long ago discovered that Centure could make himself unseen when he chose. The Dreamer, meanwhile, inhaled, grunted, and repositioned himself on the bed.
âNah, noâ really,â Centure chuckled, âBut, needs must, eh?â
âGo away, Gremlin,â said Gregory. âI donât know how much time I have with this Dreamer and Iâd like that time to go by as smoothly as possible.â
âStill all work, eh, Scribbles?â said Centure. âAâright, Iâll get outta ya hair. Iâve âad me fun, anyway.â
Gregory didnât hear from Centure again the rest of the night. As Gregoryâs Dreamer tried to get back sleep, Gregory wondered why he put up with Gremlins. Gremlins are Minions of the Aspect of Mischief. If ever youâd lost your keys, misplaced a critical file, or retrieved only one sock of a pair from your dryer, you had Gremlins to thank for that.
When the Aspect of Dreams chose Gregory as a Minion, he wondered if there were other Aspects, and what Minions of those Aspects would be, and what theyâd do. Over the years heâd met Players, Minions of the Aspect of Arts, and Grunts, Minions of the Aspect of War, and even other Gremlins. Then he met Centure.
Gregory had always felt that Centure seemed to have a particular need to annoy him; one that heâd never explained the same way twice. He seemed to take a perverse pleasure in âputtinâ the screwsâ to Gregory, as he put it.
Centure presented himself, when he chose to be seen, as a mid-to-late 20s, dark-skinned, British punk rock youth, bare-chested, with a six-inch neon green mohawk, torn and frayed blue jeans, army boots, and a button festooned denim vest with a giant Union Jack on the back. Gregory always wondered if Centure looked like this in his life as a human, or if he chose this for some reason. If the Aspect of Mischief assigned Gremlins like the Aspect of Dreams assigned Dream Recorders, then Centure would have selected a physical look from his corporeal life when he was chosen by an Aspect to be that Aspectâs Minion, so the former explanation seemed the most likely.
Gregory chose his look based on what he looked like after his service in the war, when he was working in the bank, and writing stories for the newspaper. Mid-40s, caramel skin, slightly balding, with a full beard, glasses, and a bit of a paunch. It was a body with which he was comfortable. This body didnât have the pains Gregory remembered with being this age as a human. He thought of this as the advantage of being dead.
Gregory continued to watch his Dreamer for another three hours with nothing of any note happening. His Dreamer didnât fall back into a sleep conducive to dreaming, so the wisps never coalesced into a recordable dream. After three-and-a-half hours, the Dreamerâs alarm clock went off, and Gregory took that as his cue to start packing up. He took off his goggles and placed them in his pocket, put his glasses back on, placed his pen in his pad, and stood up. He returned the chair to the nothingness from which he conjured it, and then turned on the spot and seemed to vanish into a puff of dream smoke, the Dreamer none the wiser that anyone was ever there.
When life as a 'corporeal being' ceases, some people awaken to a new life as 'minions', performing various tasks to record the histories of and guide people who are still living.
Gregory is a dream recorder--a man serving in his afterlife as someone who records the dreams of the living by viewing them through special goggles and on magical notebooks.
When Abby arrives as his newest trainee, Gregory thinks he's been sent a surprisingly easy to train recruit. What neither Abby nor Greg realize, though, is that a certain mischief-making gremlin has set other plans in motion with drastic implications for all of humanity, both the living and those in the afterlife.
The Dream Recorder is a very ambitious debut novel that is teeming with original, creative plot twists and superb world-building. It sets up a world, characters, and a storyline that I found myself invested in very early on, despite the editing errors that pop up throughout the piece.
With so many big plot lines going, though, the story becomes overwhelmed by the plot very quickly, resulting in many questions that were never answered (and, in a couple places, all-out holes that aren't resolved by the end of this book).
I found myself pulled into Gregory and Abby's struggles to return to their world and accept their new lots in life very quickly, but beyond that the story seemed to hold the reader at arm's length, preferring to progress quickly through the plot instead of go deeper into these characters. (This could have easily been a full-length novel of 50,000-75,000 words, and I would have held on for every bit of it.)
The story is told in a Middle-Grade fantasy style, being extremely vague (almost too vague to follow) on the concepts of death, whatever disease Abby had before she passed, and Gregory's relationship with another character in the book. The dialogue flows a bit like middle-grade fiction, as well. However, there are plot points here and content discussed that honestly may be better suited for YA readers.
The Dream Recorder has amazing potential, and the series overall is intriguing. I personally wish there was more substance to resolving some of the dangling plot lines, and some deeper insight into the characters (especially since they are dealing with life and death here, something I'd typically expect to take a very, very long time to transition through).
This story would be a wonderful, quick read for someone looking to just enjoy the ride (and not get too caught up in small details). It marries the thrill of The Matrix with an inventive afterlife world in a voice that many YA readers may enjoy.
**Trigger Warnings: Death, Death of a Loved One, Death due to illness, Bullying**