Max Frei is a very special author to me. Her books have been more than mere entertainment for the sake of escapism, they were closest to a friend when there's been a lack of, and they were almost a mentor I've never had but always wanted. Somebody to teach you what it's like, to really, actually live, to show you that life is comprised mostly of your attitude to it, to show you what love towards the world is, to show you how to step (and live) lightly. Because certain combinations of words open up something deep inside you, something valuable, something... right. Her books make you think in a very special rhythm while you read them, and that rhythm lingers with you for a while even after you finish them. And she speaks of important and interesting things, too. And all that is wrapped up in an attractive narrative with magical investigations and adventures. It's not 'serious literature' in any way, except the very right one. So, basically, one of the important lessons it teaches is that you can speak about important things while being entertaining, and there's nothing wrong with that. And also it makes a stand against fear, but, unlike Dune, it shows what it's like to not fear, and not tells. You close her books with a feeling that everything is and will be alright. And this is why I keep buying everything she writes immediately after it gets released, and this is why there's a special kind of closeness to people who feel the same way about these books.
But gotta say, I've been pretty disappointed lately. The first two series about sir Max from Echo were perfect in every way, but this last one, the Dreams of Echo, is... uneven. Sometimes you read it and wonder, what happened to the characters that were closer to you than your actual relatives, why is everything so mundane, naive and... dull, to the point of a bad imitation. Like the life has gone out of these books. There was only one time it has happened before, in a spin off called The Chimeras' Nests, and that wasn't pretty. Like waking up and staring into the glass eyes of a wax figure of your beloved lying next to you, while your actual beloved is nowhere to be found, and none of their friends remember them. And then sometimes something clicks, and the wax figure comes back to life, and everything returns to the way it's supposed to be. It usually happened closer to the middle of the book, and you spent the rest of the reading time trying to suppress the trauma and convince yourself that everything was alright. And the worst thing, it sort of was. The books still speak about beautiful and important things. You still admire the stories for what they are, for their structure and resolutions. And yet it doesn't negate those moments of helpless sadness that something that you dearly love has started to wane.
And this one isn't an exception, like the previous one was. This new formula works here too: first half of the book - lame, with the protagonist turned into something foolish and not really likeable, and then things start to happen, and he clicks back into that creature through which the eternity sometimes speaks, and it's mesmerizing to the point where you can't turn your eyes away because of beauty.
This time the author wanted to talk about death, so this book is about death and the special relationship with it some people have. And it's very interesting, it's just, I'm not sure I like when she snatches up her characters' voices to talk about this herself. She has a blog for this after all. Apart from this, this is a very good work of art. It comes closest to my favourite type of stories where there're no actual villains, just circumstances that force you to interpret something as evil. And it's pulled off very neatly.
And it ends quite beautifully too, almost beautiful enough to forget about the trauma thing. Definitely beautiful enough to justify it. It's sort of better that this thing exist compared to not existing. I just wish its downfall wasn't so mundane. It deserves better than that.