Dreamhunter

Elizabeth Knox

HarperCollins

Otago Daily Times, July 9th 2005

Dreams are mysterious and powerful things, rendering our rational brains vulnerable to the deeper, more primitive forces of the subconscious. The real terror of Nightmare on Elm Street is the concept of something reaching you through your sleep, and dreams hold a place of great importance for many spiritual traditions.

In Dreamhunter, Elizabeth Knox weaves this fascination with dreams together with the upheaval of adolescence and good old-fashioned adventure into a captivating work of imagination.

It is the start of the 20th century, in a country not dissimilar to our own, and the most popular sources of public entertainment are the Dreamhouses, where people take part in collective dreams in the same way we today might share a movie. These dreams are found in The Place — an arid, nightless limbo few can enter, and where even fewer (the Dreamhunters) collect the visions buried there and bring them back to the external world. Then, when the Dreamer sleeps, they can re-enter the dream and share it with other sleepers around them. But dreams can also be put to other uses: to heal, or arouse or manipulate. And The Place is also a source of nightmares, which may be put to much less benign ends.

As the story opens, cousins Laura Haim and Rose Tiebold (both daughters of Dreamhunters) are awaiting the Try, when they will be formally tested to see if they are among the select few who can enter The Place. For 15 years they have been inseparable, and when only one of them succeeds, life changes dramatically for them both. Separated both physically and by divergent experiences, the changes in their relationships with each other and with themselves are painful and lonely. Then the mysterious disappearance of Laura’s father, Tziga Haim, and the cryptic message he leaves his daughter, bring them together again in an attempt to uncover the truths hidden deep in The Place; where the dreams come from and why.

Good young-adult fiction treats its readers with respect, providing action and adventure, while having a depth and nuance of language and content that challenges and ignites the imagination. Full of rich, sensual description, beautiful language and enthralling mystery, this is as good as any of Knox’s adult novels, and far better than Harry Potter.

I reread adolescent favourites such as A Wrinkle In Time by Madeline L’Engle and Margaret Mahy’s The Changeover with as much enjoyment now as then, and I found echoes of both in Knox’s story. Although well past my teenage years, I loved this book, and think Dreamhunter will be as satisfying a read for us old children as the young adults it is written for. I look forward to the sequel with much anticipation.