Dreamwalker: The Second Plain

by Charles W. Jones

Revised 2022Saul can control dreams, not just his dreams but dreams of people he comes in contact with. At first, he is not aware of what he can do and does not understand why people act strangely when he gets angry. When he goes away to boarding school, he inadvertently calls for help from his Spirit Guide. His Spirit Guide teaches Saul about his gift and alerts him about danger from the Man who wants the gift. His paranoid warnings turn out to be true when the Man finds Saul after finishing school. Had Saul listened, then the nightmares that the Man creates for his pleasure and gain would not have happened. To end the nightmares, Saul must solve a poorly written “riddle” before it’s too late. Saul enlists Marcie, a newly divorced nurse who works at the Lakeside Sanitarium, to help him stop the Man. He tells her the story of how he came to be at the Lakeside Sanitarium and the nightmares the Man created using Saul’s power to his advantage. When she awakes, she thinks it was all just a dream.

408 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 27, 2011

About the author

Charles grew up in a town of 500 people--Shoshoni, WY. It's the Center of the Universe, or so he thought growing up since it is in the exact center of the state. There were quite a few "characters" in our town and it was one of those places that everyone knows your business. The thing that stuck with me the most was, how dark it was at night. Charles was a jumpy kid at night. Anything that moved in the dark, any sound made his heart pound in his chest. Thunder had the same effect. His first book, The Second Plain, was extremely influenced by that town. Most of it is actually set there. Darkness is a deep influence for him and has Shoshoni to thank for it.

Reviews

[Nicholas Karpuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a danger in purchasing a self-published ebook as soon as its released. Typos may occur, some things may appear to need a slight it of editing. Nothing utterly crippling, but I feel compelled to hold a star hostage until I see a cleaned up version.

Fiction heavily based in a dreamworld often gives me the same issues as time travel. I'm always fretting over the rules and logistics. If there's no consequences and limitations then the tension gets sucked straight out.

While this book has an interesting perspective and a genuine sense of menace from the antagonist, I often found myself stopping to say, "Wait, what? Can they do that?" There were nods to a sense of consequence later in the book, such as the notion that death in the Second Plain can prevent someone from dreaming at all, which I'm pretty sure can drive a person insane.

If anything, I just want more. The sections that bookend the main story of Saul had a lot of tension to them, with the character of Marcie handling the strange creepy environment of the mental institution. Jones' ability to create mood and tension really shined in many of the scenes taking place in the real world.

Still, an interesting take on the fantasy scenario of the shared dreamspace.