This is the transcript of my latest podcast episode, where I revisit books I read a long time ago and compare my reviews!
Hello and welcome to Resurrected Reviews Revisited, part of the Will You Still Love It Tomorrow podcast. I’m Annie and, in each Reviews episode, I pick something I’ve reviewed sometime since 2005, reread or rewatch it, and then compare my reactions. Fair warning: there will be spoilers.
This month, my pick is The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist.
This is a sort-of historical, sort-of fantasy novel, published in 2006, about three disparate protagonists working to defeat a powerful cabal of villains, who are brainwashing people to further their nefarious aims.
Before revisiting it, my recollections of my original experience of encountering this book are very sketchy. I have no idea how it got on my radar or really anything about it at all, other than a strong feeling that I thought it was dreadful and that I didn’t get very far before giving up on it… Does this make it a good choice for revisiting many years later? Probably not! But we are where we are…
Here’s what I thought on revisiting it this year.
I wasn’t planning on looking the book up at all prior to reading it, or in fact looking at the blurb on the back – but the blurb was actually on the inside front cover and I did catch sight of it on picking the book up. It details three main characters – Miss Temple, of feisty nature and corkscrew curls, who is trying to find out why her fiance has broken their engagement; Cardinal Chang who is supposed to kill someone but discovers they are already dead; and Dr Svenson, who is chaperone to a prince embroiled with some unsavory individuals. All this sounds quite interesting – I like a multi-pronged approach where disparate characters eventually come together in some way. But, and I realise I might be going overboard on the feminism here, it’s a bit disappointing that the two male characters get both interesting titles and intriguing plot threads, while the female character is a Miss, whose blurb relates to her feistiness, her hair and her romantic status…
It’s also not a great start for there to be an obvious typo in the second sentence. On top of that, it immediately feels very overwritten, though also quite an intriguing introductory character study of Miss Temple in the first page or two. There’s a great deal of very mundane detail about her everyday actions, with several long lists of items – but I don’t necessarily mind that, and I’m finding myself invested in Miss Temple as a character quite quickly. It would likely be very possible to criticise her presentation in some ways – but she reminds me so intensely of myself, that I don’t feel the need to do so! I love the way she approaches a very emotional event (namely, her fiance calling off their engagement) in what she believes is a very rational way (analysing every aspect in a calm and collected way) and then making clearly irrational decisions from a standpoint of what she sees as perfect logic.
It’s interesting that the book is definitely set in our world, as there are early references to Russia, but the exact location of the events of the story seems to be fictional. The period is also unspecified, though the clothing, technology level and what information is provided about the society suggests late 1800s or early 1900s.
By midway through the first chapter, I have absolutely no recollection of any of the events of the story so far, but I’m really enjoying it! It’s intriguing, the level of descriptive detail makes it very immersive, I like Miss Temple a lot as a character, am very impressed by her presence of mind when confronted by tricky situations, and I’m certainly invested in what happens to her… And then an awful lot happens very quickly – a violent sexual assault, two graphic deaths and a daring escape from mortal peril by Miss Temple! It’s possible, if I got this far the first time around, that I was put off by the violence and near-rape, but perhaps I’m more hardened now…
And then we switch to a new character – Cardinal Chang – whom Miss Temple crosses paths with very briefly on a train, which gives enough of a connection for me to be invested in his part of the story already and is much preferable to the story changing directions without an obvious connection.
As with Miss Temple initially reminding me of me, I’m warming to Chang because, as someone with no sense of smell who spends mist of his time in a library, he reminds me of our most faithful listener.
But I’m almost immediately put off by his ‘stirring of lust’ at seeing Miss Temple on the train being prompted by the tear stains on her cheeks.
The characters are also held at a slight remove by the reader not being told their first names.
The first half of Chang’s initial chapter, while still well written, lacks any kind of tension because we see him on the train at the end of Miss Temple’s chapter and he then relates the basics of his adventure at the country house to his client the next day. So the entire evening then being described in detail from his point of view is almost entirely redundant.
Whenever Chang encounters a woman, or even the female form of a statue, they are sexually objectified. But that wasn’t the case in Miss Temple’s narrative, so it’s obviously a specific character trait rather than an authorial attitude. Chang himself at least acknowledges that being distracted by women’s physical attributes puts him at a disadvantage. So, it’ll be interesting to see if it’s some that’s repeated for the other male protagonist.
And he comes into play towards the end of Chang’s first chapter, as another player in the complex story – a doctor, seemingly trying to protect a young prince from the mysterious cabal who are apparently turning people into compliant zombies with their weird process.
There’s a huge coincidence at the end of Chang’s chapter, where he randomly checks into the hotel where Miss Temple lives, after spending quite a lot of time failing to figure out who she is. But then, as I was told long ago, it’s fine for your characters to get *into* situations via coincidence, as long as it’s not also utilised to get them out.
While I do appreciate the connections between the three main characters being laid out at least to a certain extent as things progress, the chapters are exceedingly long, meaning that, by the time Dr Svenson is properly introduced, Miss Temple has been out of the story for 65 pages and she and Chang are likely to be absent for another 65, if things proceed as they have so far.
Interestingly, Dr Svenson is immediately given a first name – and it’s the name I used for the protagonist of my first novel – Abelard! His part of the story is still interesting, but he’s less engaging than Chang and I’m really wishing Miss Temple would come back into it. The structure would be served a lot better by much shorter chapters.
Svenson’s chapter ebbs and flows quite a bit, and things are starting to feel a little bit stagnant by the ends of it, since we’ve gone over the same period multiple times now and the story hasn’t really progressed all that much. And he also connects up with Miss Temple via complete coincidence – but I’m hoping things will pick up now that all three protagonists are in the same place at the same time.
I’m glad to be back with Miss Temple and I think her perspective is very well written. She’s still working through everything as logically and rationally as she can, and is very impressive in the way she stares down anyone who challenges her. But she reacts in an understandably emotional way, given her recent experiences, when Svenson appears and might be a threat.
We finally learn Miss Temple’s first name – Celestial – on pg 207.
The way Chang is reintroduced and all three protagonists finally come together is very satisfying. And at more than 200 pages in, while I have been enjoying the book overall, it feels like the story is now properly beginning.
Miss Temple has, by this time, fully regained her composure, and takes charge of the situation admirably by ordering tea and suggesting a pooling of information and resources. I have decided that, despite her being more than 20 years younger than me, I want to be Miss Temple when I grow up.
The coincidences are starting to pile up. After all three characters run into each other at the same hotel entirely at random, they have to flee pursuit and take refuge in an art gallery to decide their next steps. And completely by chance, the exhibition has a picture that shows aspects of the mysterious Process they are investigating.
And then, after only one chapter together, they split up again! Which is a bit annoying, as I was very much enjoying their interactions and it felt much more like a cohesive story with them being in the same place.
I’m not very happy about Chang’s continuing bad attitude towards women – he is distracted by Miss Temple’s physical attributes and also assumes she’s still in love with Bascombe because of ‘how women are’. He also comments to Svenson that, alone, Miss Temple will undoubtedly be quickly captured and killed. And yet he then immediately delivers himself into the hands of the bad guys in a really stupid way.
Chang constantly being dangerously distracted or mesmerised by pretty much any woman he comes across is getting a bit tedious, and the characters themselves are continuing to comment on the number of coincidences.
But I’m still very impressed by the author’s ability to write endless pages of detailed minutiae that manage to be engaging while not really moving the plot forward very much at all.
Chang’s attitude towards Miss Temple continues to be distasteful as well. He acknowledges that himself but I’m not sure that makes it any better.
It’s also a bit disappointing that the leaders of the cabal seen to want men to undergo the Process to provide access to influence and information, while the women are used merely for sexual favours.
Miss Temple us an excellent female protagonist and the Contessa is a formidable female antagonist. But the book treats Miss Temple quite badly, and the Contessa seems to see all other women as disposable tools to be used pure for her own benefit.
The structure causes a diminishment of tension again because after Chang’s second 60+ page chapter, we go back in time to follow Dr Svenson and we already know he won’t find Miss Temple at Tarr Manor because of what Chang discovered of her fate in town.
Though I suppose we don’t know what will befall Dr Svenson there.
He has also suddenly developed potentially romantic feelings towards Miss Temple (though Chang’s can’t really be described as romantic), which I feel is unnecessary. Just because she’s female, it doesn’t mean she has to be attractive in whatever way to all the male characters.
Dr Svenson continues to disappoint with his attitude to the various women on the train, along with his erotic dreams. It seems to me an unnecessary development that serves no real purpose.
The book itself is unfortunately starting to feel rather unnecessary and without real purpose, which is a shame. I now know it’s the first in a trilogy and, while I’m still enjoying the writing and I’m interested in the characters, I’m not sure I can imagine reading two more books like this one! I often find the decision to give up on a book partway through is aided by realising I’m not going to carry on with the series, and I almost decided to stop reading this one at the halfway point (which has taken me two weeks to get to). But, I think I’ll press on at least for a bit longer.
And, as so often before, there’s a seemingly interminable stretch of dense description and character introspection, which is engaging enough but fails to move things forward at all, followed by a small but exciting reveal that keeps me just intrigued enough to keep going…
This cycle continues, with the latter part of Dr Svenson’s second chapter really dragging, but then concluding with an exciting (almost literal) cliffhanger. I thought about giving upon the book again before reaching the end of the chapter, but stuck it out – and now we’re going back to Miss Temple again, and I like her narrative by the far the best, so I thought I’d keep going for the time being.
But then I went away – on a reading retreat, ironically – and took a break from this book for a few days. On returning, my enthusiasm for picking the book up again had massively waned, especially considering I now know it’s the first in a trilogy – and, as mentioned above, I really don’t think I can stick out this type of writing and lack of plot progress for another two-and-a-half books.
So, at just over halfway through, and multiple instances of thinking about giving up on it – I gave up on The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters.
In terms of diversity:
There are multiple instances of fatphobia, with quite a few minor characters, both male and female, having their size highlighted in a derogatory manner.
Cardinal Chang is not an Asian cardinal but a white man with a red coat and facial scars that make his eyes look slanted. So less than ideal.
The presentation of, attitude towards and treatment of the various female characters leaves a lot to be desired. There’s a lot of objectification from the two male protagonists, which is disappointing, and most of the women are used for sex or happy to manipulate and torture other women.
Overall thoughts:
The prose is undoubtedly overwritten, with far more extraneous detail than is necessary, a strange tendency for use of incorrect prepositions, frequent redundant usages I would definitely take a red pen to, and some rather problematic aspects and attitudes.
That said, however, I actually really liked the writing overall, as well as finding the characters engaging and the story compelling, at least most of the time over the course of the first half of the book. Perhaps assuming I was going to hate the book and want to give up on it in the first few pages lowered my expectations, but this was an unexpectedly good reading experience at first. It just got too overwhelming and lacking in plot to sustain my interest over the whole 750 pages, especially considering there would be another 1000+ pages to complete the series.
Looking back to my original review, it turns out it was in 2009, so perhaps understandable that I didn’t remember much about it. But it also turns out that my recollections of giving up on the book much earlier than this time around are wrong!
Here’s what I thought the first time around:
“The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist is utterly bonkers, as books go. I can’t quite decide whether it’s a work of genius or total drivel, though I’m starting to err towards the latter.
Three diverse and unlikely heroes (young socialite Celestial Temple, German military doctor Abelard Svenson, and mysterious mercenary/assassin Cardinal Chang) become individually embroiled in the machinations of a powerful cabal of nefarious bad guys. They meet by pure coincidence and join forces to save the world from enslavement.
The setting is a fictional city around the turn of the twentieth century, as far as I can tell, but the bad guys are using a weird alchemical formula to transpose people’s memories into glass books, so I guess the genre is steampunk more than anything.
Anyway, there are chases, explosions, the heroes get separated and captured and manage ridiculous escapes on multiple occasions, the plot is incredibly convoluted and the prose is rather overwritten – far too many parentheses and subordinate clauses (though that’s generally the way I write too, so I don’t mind it). The heroes work alone for most of the book, which is a drawback, as the chapters are very long and it’s difficult to keep track of what they’re doing when they disappear for hundreds of pages at a time, and it’s much more fun when their all together. The book is also too long – it started to drag a bit in the last quarter before picking up again for an exciting conclusion.
For the most part, I rather enjoyed it, and I think there is a rip-roaring roleplaying game just dying to be born from the seeds of this story, but I’ll have to think for a bit before deciding whether I want to embark on the next in the series.”
So, I actually got further the first time around! Though I definitely didn’t carry on with the other books in the series.
And that’s it for this episode of Reviews Revisited.
Next month, I’m going to be revisiting How To Stop Time by Matt Haig, which I’ve also selected for our first Family Book Club meeting of 2025.
Many thanks to Cambo for our theme music. And thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it wherever you get your podcasts.
And if you have any comments, or if you want to tell me about a time you revisited some media, and whether or not you still loved it afterwards, you can email me at willyoustillloveit@gmail.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Lastly, please join us for the next main episode of Will You Still Love It Tomorrow in two weeks to hear what happens when Annie gets Dave to watch some of the 1998 college drama TV series, Felicity. Will Dave like it at all? And will Annie still love it after our discussion? I’m looking forward to finding out!
Bye for now!