Dreamonologist

by Gregory Pettit

Julian Adler was London’s Dreamwalker, using magic and machine guns to put the city’s worst nightmares to rest – permanently. Now, his little girl has been taken, and he’s using every skill, every trick, and every contact he has to get her back.
After a mysterious letter appears, Julian has a vision of an artefact that can locate his daughter – a vision that also shows London sinking under a red tide of blood and vampires in less than two weeks! The race is on, and there are bounty hunters, secret societies, and escaped supernatural killers all after the same prize!
But Julian isn’t alone, there are powerful beings interested in him, and people willing to help – for a price. Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

390 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2019

Reviews

[Jeffrey Hatcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Pettit has conceived an interesting plot which seems highly original (I'm not yet highly versed in its genre). Julian Lucas Adler is a "dreamwalker" - one who stalks through the dreams of others. He seems to be half voyeur and half reluctant interventionist who fights the forces of evil in the land of dreams (vampires in particular), whatever the connection may be to the real world.

The biggest force of evil is Pettit's tragic writing style which doesn't induce slumber but rather mires the reader down in so much unnecessary descriptive text that the book becomes easy to put down. Pettit needs to remove the simile from his toolbox altogether and ruthlessly weed out descriptions of personalities, places, and circumstances that are peripheral to the action and plot. Several examples of ghastly simile are:

"I nodded, but my stomach churned like a tumble dryer with a full load."

"I didn’t stop staring—at Edward Sloane. He’d walked in with the Chapter Master, and he was suddenly Mia’s supervisor. I needed this explained like a junkie needs a fix."

The book needs similes like a catfish needs reading glasses.

Pettit's target audience is a bit obscure. I would have guessed that it would include older teenagers as well as the younger middle aged male demographic. Then I read the following:

"Chelsea and Westminster Hospital is a major teaching hospital with a budget of over three hundred million pounds. That budget is dwarfed by the value of the land that the generic-looking, glass-and-brick hospital sits on, and, as I strolled through the foyer, I was amazed that most of its clientele was made up of the general public."

Who, exactly, wants hospital budgets in a fantasy adventure story? I read fiction precisely to get away from this level of reality. Hospital budgets are a nightmare.

[Suzanne Hare · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book deals with the idea that it is important to keep paranormal a secret from the general population and tries to help people through injecting a Dreamonologist into their dreams to subdue or defeat the paranormal that is causing the threat. It is creative and a new take on the paranormal world. The main character joined the organization to help find his daughter. Each sleep brings a new challenge, chaos and lots of action. The characters are interesting and well developed. The storyline is complex dealing with the character’s awake, or real world, and the dream world and both of them have numerous barriers, obstacles, twists and turns. There is an emotional rawness to this book as the feeling of frustration, loneliness, sorrow, love, betrayal and fear create a sort of emotional rollercoaster that adds a lot of dimension to the book. If you like an action-packed paranormal adventure with substance then you will enjoy this book.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Joscelyn Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A father's worst nightmare

Julian had to pull out all the stops in this third addition to the Dreamwalker Chronicles. I thoroughly enjoyed following him on his journey to find his kidnapped daughter, I could not stop reading as he raced against the clock to beat the other factions to the artefact. This was a very enjoyable read

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first time I have read anything by this author, but the blurb sounded interesting, so I gave it a go. It’s definitely different from what I usually would read but I did find the story was an interesting one and it is well written. It’s an interesting read and well worth the time.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Pat Eroh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not read the previous books but I liked this story a lot. I will be going back to read the first two books and maybe it will make this even better but at this point, I already know I love this book.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.