Thursday 10 October 2013

URBAN FANTASY REVIEW: Dream London - Tony Ballantyne

Release Date: 10/10/10
Publisher:  Solaris

SYNOPSIS:

Captain Jim Wedderburn has looks, style and courage by the bucketful. He's adored by women, respected by men and feared by his enemies. He s the man to find out who has twisted london into this strange new world, and he knows it. But in Dream London the city changes a little every night and the people change a little every day. The towers are growing taller, the parks have hidden themselves away and the streets form themselves into strange new patterns. There are people sailing in from new lands down the river, new criminals emerging in the east end and a path spiralling down to another world. Everyone is changing, no one is who they seem to be.


REVIEW:

To be honest here I loved the idea, the premise promised a huge tale and knowing the type of writing that Tony brought to his other books generated an absolute need to start this as soon as possible. So settling down with a huge mug of coffee I cracked the spine and got started.

All round the book was OK, however the main problem that I had was that I didn’t like the lead character, I found him smug, a little hard to get a grip on and all round I didn’t find a facet that I liked about him. It made the rest of the book hard to get through yet for this massive problem, I absolutely loved the inventiveness of the world. It felt rounded, had great imagination and had something to amaze round pretty much every corner. Yet for all that, not having a principle character that I got on with detracted from the rest of the book. Yes it had pace, yes it had some wonderful twists but missing that key ingredient really makes it hard to struggle through. A great shame.



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