The Dreaming, Vol. 2

The Dreaming #2

by Queenie Chan

'The Dreaming' follows the adventures of twin sisters Amber and Jeanie who uncover a dark secret after enrolling at Greenwich Private College, a boarding school in New South Wales where girls seem to vanish without leaving a trace.

Genres: Manga, Graphic Novels, Horror, Fantasy, Mystery, Comics, Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published November 7, 2006

About the author

Queenie Chan was born in Hong Kong in 1980, and migrated to Australia when she was six years old. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Information Systems, but didn’t follow that career path due to graduating in 2002, in the middle of the dot-com bust. In 2004, she began drawing a 3-volume mystery-horror series called “The Dreaming” for LA-based manga publisher TOKYOPOP. To date, it has been translated into multiple languages.

She has since collaborated on several single-volume graphic novels with best-selling author Dean Koontz, as prequels to his “Odd Thomas” series of novels. After that, she worked on Small Shen, the prequel to Kylie Chan’s “White Tiger” Chinese fantasy series.

She is currently living in Sydney, Australia, and is working on a series of 8 short ghost stories, titled “The Man with the Axe in his Back”. It will be out as e-books in both prose and comics-prose format in August 2014.

Reviews

[༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️

[lkitkat · Rating 5 out of 5]

the story continues and I still love it again I may be biased since it is a childhood favorite. I do love the woods and all the mystery.

[Alice4170 🌙 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 ⭐️

[I'mogén · Rating 3 out of 5]

Besides the spelling errors and not fully understanding where this was set until half way through this volume, I enjoyed this a lot more than the first volume.
The plot was better developed and left me wanting to know what the real mystery of this school is.
There were less characters to keep track of which I was thankful for, but they still weren't as well developed as they could have been.
All in all, still a medicore series but enjoyable nonetheless.

Pick it up, give it a go and enjoy! ^^

[✟Roxanne✟(Death by Book Avalanche) ☠ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A continuation of the first book The Dreaming, Vol. 1 it stays fast-paced with a great sense of atmosphere.
More please :)

[Andrew Mattson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everything at Greenwich Private College grinds to a complete halt after the discovery of Millie’s body. While she disappeared mysteriously into the surrounding Australian bush lands randomly in the middle of the night like so many other girls of the past that were students there, she is the first to be found but no one knows what led her outside or how she died.

The twins Jeanie and Amber are stuck with a few remaining students but they are handling things differently. Amber remains bed ridden and just wants to sleep but continues to be plagued by disturbing nightmares of Victorian school girls chasing her.

Meanwhile, Jeanie throws herself into investigating the schools mysteriously history to try and make sense of the missing girls. After talking with one of the teachers, Miss Anu, who is the last teacher left while the school is on suspension, she finds Miss Anu was a student here too and her friend and roommate Anne Galloway had disappeared just like Millie but she was never found.

Also, she finds out that the headmaster Beatrice Spector is gone and this isn’t the first time the school had mysterious disappearances. In fact, Beatrice was the sole survivor of the original 11 disappearances when the school was in its first few years before it was know as Greenwich Private College. Not only was Beatrice the lone survivor but she was a twin and her twin sister Mary Spector also had been one of the girls that vanished bringing the total through tall the tears too 23 girls that vanished.

As Jeanie goes to find her sister to let her know what she’s found, she’s startled to find Amber in a sleepwalking like daze. Once she snaps Amber out of it, Amber has her own scary finding, she had been talking to Millie in a dream as Jeanie an the other students all reported seeing girls outside the school coming from the bush and many resembled the missing girls from the past. Why have they come back now? What curse does the school have?

Super eerie and creepy. This volume had great suspense and I can’t wait for read the third and final book.

[Eyla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am actually really enjoying this trilogy, it's surprised me. I guess I just like the horror theme and I don't read enough horror to satisfy that need for it. But nevertheless, I guess as I have not read much of the genre, I am not the best person to rate this but comparing the meer story and the characters, I'd say this is definitely worth a try. Jeanie is determined and motivated by fear while her twin, Amber, is falling into sleep deprivation and a sort of depression-like state. These two characters (alongside the side-character cast) work to solve the mystery of the missing girls and Victorian dresses (which is actually a lot more interesting than the words can give it credit).
Overall, so far in the trilogy, highly recommend.

[Catie Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reread from way back in middle school. Reviewing all 3 at the same time, so you'll see this copy and pasted. This used to terrify me, but now I just see it as a charming mystery! Definitely some creepy art work with a good ghost story but not nearly as scary as I remember.

The dialogue is definitely choppier than I remember and some of the story beats were... odd?? Minor spoilers ahead:

If you know your twin sister is acting odd and having horrible, horrible nightmares and telling you she wants herself back... WHY would you give her MORE sleeping pills and just leave her alone in your room with assumed ghosts roaming about the school???? Just weird choices to make.

Overall not a bad little ghost story manga!

[Kailey Wicked · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm so interested in this story. It's the nostalgia but also the new wonder and excitement I feel for finally getting to read the rest of this series.

This second volume was so much, so many interesting reveals and new information that I could have never seen coming. Granted, this story was such a mystery to me that I had no theories as to what could have even been going on. Up until now, the story has just been living in my head as is, rent free for years. I like the direction the story is going, I love the paranormal aspects, I love the mystery. I cannot wait to find out the rest in the end. I have no idea what is going on and I like it that way.

[Kristin Katsuye · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the first time I’ve read the second volume. I had the first volume since I was a teen, but never finished the series. Luckily years later, my library has it available as ebooks. I’m finally reading through the story.

I’m sure I would have liked this more as a teen. In fact I remember liking the first volume. This time around, it reads very juvenile. The general story isn’t bad, but it’s something that feels very middle grade. I would rate this around anywhere from elementary to high school. Of course any age can read this, but it feels very much something like a kids cartoon.

[Kacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

For this being a trilogy, it feels like this book gave the most important details and backstory as to what's going on, so book three can focus on how the mystery gets solved/hopefully giving us a happy ending for everyone involved?

I enjoyed this as much as the first book, it really kept the momentum and pacing up while not feeling like it gave everything away! Excited to see. How it concludes in the last book!

[Kayla Blevins · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ rounded down. The dialogue is way smoother in this volume - it helps that the mystery really gets kicked into gear. My biggest critique is how time moves in the story. It says weeks pass, but it doesn’t quite feel like that. Maybe if the characters were shown in other rooms, bored out of their minds? Either way, I purchased the third volume shortly after - the mystery was really good!

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume Two in the series where we follow twins who are attending boarding school in the middle of nowhere and kids are disappearing (again).

Very creepy tale with good art, nice pacing, good characters.

[Dine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ich muss wissen wie es weiter geht!

[Emily Cooke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite good - would recommend. :)

[Emmi · Rating 4 out of 5]

#CharmsExtraCredit 🌟
The athmosphere in this trilogy is so creepy. 👌😱 I like it very much. One more to go.

[n [larrythelatypus] · Rating 5 out of 5]

so good, so juicy, so creepy, it only volume 3 wasn't like a gajillion dollars and the omnibus was sold for less....gonna have to read it from Kindle I think. SO GOOD

[Ahmetcan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hikaye akmıyor. Kıyafet çizimi güzel.

[Francine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a little more interesting than the previous volume. I was more invested in the characters, but I still don't really care too much about the twin protagonists... They're so serious all the time, and Amber literally lies in bed this whole volume.....

Fav thing about the volume was the Junji Ito-esque art style in the bonus content lmao. I think the art style of the main content is a bit too generic. (I do like the Victorian dresses, though!)

[Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm hovering between a three and four star read. This kind of suffers from second book syndrome, in that it's past the intros/set up from the first volume, but we aren't to the grand reveal of the third, so... gotta create some mystery. And that's not really a fault, more of a necessary evil for all those playing second fiddle. OK... This review is going to go... all over the place. Just bear with me, I've got some things to say. The possibility of Aboriginal dream time and group disappearances gave me serious Picnic at Hanging Rock vibes! Honestly, the opening of this novel where Millie muses on the notion of eternal youth, nearly mimics Miranda's (Picnic chick) sentiments. But, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. First off, Amber and Jeanie are back, but Amber appears to be suffering from terrible nightmares and spends most of the novel asleep. But Jeanie won't sit idly by watching the school crumble (and boy does it ever crumble: the students and one remaining teacher are literally trapped by flooded roads and a power outage, further aiding the isolation). The amount of tension generated is impressive, when you realize all this is taking place without any location change; the danger lurks within and around. Even the art work brought on the creepy factor. For instance, when Amber is explaining her dream to Miss Anu, a picture of the surrounding bush, appearing to get closer with each panel overlaps with the dialogue, a sort of visual reinforcement that there is no escape. Speaking of, we find out that Miss Anu is a former student who's roommate disappeared much like Millie, and after so many dead ends in the case, plans to resign at the term's end. Her resignation is a double edged sword: not only is she leaving the students to fend for themselves (headmistress is MIA), but she's resigned to the fact that she'll never have an explanation/justice for her friend. Also, side note, who the hell thinks it's a good idea to let the ghostly chicks INTO THE BUILDING?! When they showed up in the rain, looking all Night of the Living Dead at the door, I wanted to slap the one who started the chorus of "unlock the doors"! Bump that, better double bolt every last lock. I'm interested to see the story's resolution, or if maybe there is no explanation. And like Miss Anu says, we just to have accept the inexplicable.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Little Bookworm

When twins Jeanie and Amber are sent to Greenwich Private College in Australia, they expect it will be a regular school. Things quickly turn creepy as the sisters are told to pretend they are not twins and start dreaming the same dreams. As they delved further into the history of the school and the rumors of haunting and missing girls, the twins start to realize that the key might be in their dreams.

I went ahead and read all three since manga are short and it's only a three part series. This is some creepy stuff right here. The first volume is the introduction to the story with one of the twins getting weirded out right away at their new boarding school. Then they have the same dream about the bushland that surrounds the school and girls with knifes. The second and third volume give more history of the school and the disappearances that have happened over the years with the very creepy back story of the vice-principal. At first, it seemed that the story was going to devolve into some lame fairy tale, but then it takes a sharp turn at what? and then stops at nightmarish so I was actually somewhat surprised at the end. Though there was a storyline that feels like it was dropped somewhere along the way and I'm not quite sure what happened there at the end.


As far the artwork, it is typical manga style although with more creepy eyes than I have read before. I had some trouble with who was who until I realized that Jeanie always has a ponytail and then I got it. I think it is hard to draw twins and not have confusion though. The art really did add to the overall effect the story was going for and the paintings inside of the school were majorly horrible (like in scary, not in poorly drawn or anything).

[Nicole (Reading Books With Coffee) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In volume 2, we learn more about the school’s history. Classes are suspended indefinitely, after Millie’s body turned up in Volume 1. Only 40 students are left behind at the school, plus Ms. Anu, the only teacher left at the school, and the vice-principal, Mrs. Skeener. All of the girls who went missing (23) mysteriously show up, coming in from the bushlands.

I liked this volume a lot better than the first one, and found it moved a lot faster than volume 1. It was definitely a lot more creepy than volume 1…and mostly importantly, we learned about the students that vanished. The first group of students vanished when the school first opened, along with the headmistress at the time…and Mrs. Skeener was the sole survivor of that incident. She lost her twin sister, and her aunt, who happened to be the headmistress. This is why Mrs. Skeener didn’t want Amber and Jeannie to be there, especially since their aunt is the current headmistress and got them into the school. We also learned that Ms. Anu went to the school, and had a friend who vanished.

There’s all kinds of crazy connections going on, and I’m really curious as to how they’ll all play out.

The artwork was about the same as it was in the first volume, and it’s definitely creepy, especially the way the school is in the middle of nowhere, and is surround by the bushland. The school is definitely isolated, and it’s no surprise weird things happen, and that the school has a weird past.

My Rating: It gets a 4 out 5. I’m really glad I decided to read this volume, and I can’t wait for the next one!

[Flan · Rating 4 out of 5]

*********
Please do not read this review without having the read the first volume of this manga series.


This volume of The Dreaming is a direct continuation of the previous volume where the students have foundMillie's body.
The school and the students come to a halt. Many students leave to go home or transfer schools altogether. Our protagonists Jeanie and Amber remain in the school due to the unfortunate reason of no longer having a place to call "home". Jeanie uses this opportunity to look into the history of the school and uncovers many secrets that were hidden away by the owner of the school Mrs. Skeener.

The art still remained fantastic in this volume and continued to give just the right amount of creeps you'd expect to get from a school that has been completely cut-off from the outside world.

Not much happened in this volume other than the simple progression of the plot. Nothing too major was uncovered- or at least I didn't feel it was too major. Don't get me wrong, I still thoroughly enjoyed it but it seemed a little too anti-climatic compared to the first volume.

I look forward to the conclusion of this series.

[Miss Ryoko · Rating 2 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.5

Well, thankfully Queenie Chan broke the "Can you guess how much time has passed?" cycle and mentioned a number of times that a few weeks had past since this happened and etc. and so forth, so that was good. But... I'm still kind of on the fence on this.... the story is intriguing, but it's not as exciting as I hoped it'd be. And even the *gasp* so many questions... I just don't even care to learn about them. Questions like why do the twins keep having these f-ed up dreams? Why does the vice principal hate twins so much? Are twins bad luck for real for this place or what? How is Mrs. Skeener only the vice principal when she owns the damn place? Shouldn't she be the headmistress... I mean she makes all the damn decisions anyway! What is Miss Anu's mysterious past? What's behind the sealed off room? And so on and so forth. I don't even care to know the answers to these things that, I'm assuming, are supposed to be attention grabbing details to make you want to find out more. I don't know... I don't dislike it, but it's not 3 star worthy yet.

One more volume to go. Let's see how it ends.

[colleen the convivial curmudgeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Continuing the story of Greenwich school and the girls who have disappeared from it through the years. We get more history in this installment, and also find that the owner of the school has gone AWOL after the tragic events of the first Volume.

Amber starts acting stranger and stranger, mostly staying in bed and sleeping, but also frightened of her dreams.

Jeanie, meanwhile, runs around and tries to find more clues as to the secrets of the school.

My biggest complaint is how stupid Jeanie is. Amber is acting oddly. Jeanie knows there are ghosts, or something, knows the dreams are real somehow, and, presumably, that Amber is being affected by them... but never spends more than 5 seconds with her twin, keeps insisting that she's just ill, and just tries to foist more sleeping pills on her, as if that's gonna help!

I don't know if she doesn't want to admit what's going on with her sister, of if she's actively stupid, but it got really annoying.

Anyway -

The story is creepy enough, though the art still isn't really up to snuff, and I'm curious to see how things wrap up in the next and final volume.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Queenie Chan, The Dreaming, vol. 2 (Tokyopop, 2006)

The middle volume of the trilogy delves much deeper into the history of the school and the stories of the earlier missing girls; we find out why the vice-principal is so set against twins being at the school, and why Miss Anu came to teach there two years earlier. But balanced against all the new knowledge is Amber, who seems to be slipping deeper and deeper into depression; will she be the next to wander off into the bush, never to be seen again? Queenie Chan has that sort of shojo convention of making everyone look a great deal alike that bugs me (though having your main characters be twins does mandate that sort of thing, I guess); at least her male characters, what few there are, look like males. I'm still not terribly fond of shojo on the whole (but then, being male, I'm not really the target audience, am I?), but I do seem to be liking this more than most of the shojo I've read over the years. Looking forward to the concluding volume. ***

[Tsana Dolichva · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dreaming (Volume 2) by Queenie Chan is the second part of the three-volume story begun in (gasp!) Volume 1. Also note that the blurb and the review contain spoilers for Volume 1.

In Volume 2 the story picks up right where Volume 1 left off. Somewhat unsurprisingly, it mostly serves as a chance for Jeanie to learn more about the history of the school — y'know, the history no one wanted to talk about in the first Volume before everything went wrong. And on top of that, there aren't many students left at the school, to make the building extra creepy.

We are also treated to a build up of creepiness which is obviously setting up the story for the concluding volume. What will happen next? Who will survive? Will anyone get out of the school alive, or will it just merge into the surrounding bushlands, never to be seen again? And what's with the Victorian dresses?

To answer these questions, (and more!) I read on to the last volume...

4 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog.

[Joseph Monaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pace gets quicker with the second volume of The Dreaming. The disappearances of students at Greenwich school are explained more, and Amber and Jeanie become more depressed and isolated.

Volume 2 has the same great artwork as before, and the storyline is still fascinating. However, originally the storyline was quite subtle. Subtlety is removed from Volume 1, and the books become much more dark. They are no longer just ghost stories, but ones with very supernatural themes.

Volume 2 is just as enjoyable as the first book and definitely worth buying if you enjoyed the first book, but perhaps not as creepy. This time there isn't a short story at the back of the book like there was in Volume 1 either sadly.

[James Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story opens with Millie talking about how great it would be to be able to live forever. She, of course, is the one who went missing in the first volume. Millie's body has been found. Many students are leaving the school permanently. Amber has taken to her bed.


The one teacher left talks to Jeanie about the old vice-principal and superstitions. Amber tells the teacher about her terrible nightmares. Jeanie finds out that over twenty students have gone missing over the years from that school.

Amber's nightmares continue. Some of the history of the old vice-principal is given, along with history of one of the teachers. Then the old vice-principal disappears and Amber claims to have talked to a dead girl.


>Really good second volume.

[Rebecca]

Of the trilogy I have to say that this one was my least favourite but in saying that it was still completely awesome and oh so spooky.

The illustrations in this one creeped me out and amazed me and I was reading this one at night all alone. So it definitely added to the scary factor.

The story line continued from the ending of the first one and it was really good. It definitely grabbed my attention and I definitely can say that it was fantastic.

If you like mystery and if you like horror and you like manga this book will be utterly perfect. I do of course recommend that you read the series in order though.