The Dreaming Vol.1

The Dreaming #1

by Queenie Chan

Identical twins Jeanie and Amber arrive at their new boarding school on the edge of the Australian bush to find it steeped in mystery.

Genres: Manga, Graphic Novels, Horror, Fantasy, Comics, Mystery, Young Adult

175 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

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

[Krystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good! An addictive mystery with a spooky Australian setting. I really enjoyed it!

The story is set at an Aussie boarding school, deep in the bush. There are some mysterious happenings, and girls have been going missing, so it's the perfect atmosphere for a spooky little story.

The artwork is cool - I really liked it. Easy to make out, clean lines and easy to follow action.

Great variety in the story and the characters are a lot of fun.

Plus it's got a cliffhanger ending so you bet I'm already hanging out for book #2!

An excellent read, and even better because it's Australian manga by an Australian author and you sure don't get that too often! Highly recommend.

With thanks to the author for a copy

[Heather ~*dread mushrooms*~ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is for the series, volumes 1-3.

I didn't like the art, but the story was kind of interesting. The atmosphere was definitely creepy, especially toward the end of the last volume, but I wanted more of an explanation for the disappearances. The setting was interesting (Australian bush) and I wish it had been used more effectively.

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

This first volume of Queenie Chan's trilogy, The Dreaming, which follows the story of twin sisters Jeanie and Amber, and their experiences at Greenwich Private College - an exclusive, remote, and (as they soon discover) frightening girls' boarding school deep in the Australian bush, where students have a habit of going missing - also happens to be the first manga, or Japanese-style comic, I have read. Given that it is my intention to read the two subsequent titles - this one ends with a cliff-hanger, after all! - and that I have a long-standing interest in learning more about the manga genre/artform, it will definitely not be the last, however.

I wasn't sure just what to expect, going in, but I found The Dreaming, Vol. 1 to be an engaging story, with appealing artwork. I can't say I was particularly frightened - maybe if I were a younger reader? - but I did want to know what was going on, and raced through the book... only to discover (of course!) that I need to obtain the second. After reading Thomas Siddell's fabulous Gunnerkrigg Court books, which also tell the story of an unusual boarding school, I was a little disappointed to find all the artwork here to be black and white. But apparently that is a characteristic of manga, and after my initial surprise, I soon grew accustomed to the style, and came to like it. Recommended to all young manga-lovers, kids who like frightening tales, and all readers (like myself) interested in contemporary adaptations of the girls' school-story genre!

[Sarai · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Booklist
Gr. 9-12. In the first volume of a three-book manga series, identical twins Jeanie and Amber arrive at their new boarding school on the edge of the Australian bush to find it steeped in mystery. Vague rumors of students disappearing, sealed rooms, tight-lipped teachers, and a collection of disturbing paintings have the girls unnerved, and when they start experiencing the same nightmare, they really begin to worry. The subtle buildup of spooky tension culminates when one of the girls' friends goes missing, only to turn up dead. The art is traditional manga, but Chan effectively tweaks the style to create an eerie atmosphere--creepy, but not graphic or deeply scary. Readers may initially connect this to DC's Sandman graphic novels, but they'll soon find that Chan's story has a personality and direction all its own.

The art was very nice and I loved the costuming of the characters. I was also a little spooked! For readers who require a real scare to be spooked, don't take my spooking too seriously - it doesn't take a lot, just a little atmosphere and being home alone. :) I will be getting the next ones in the series.

[Adibah Syahzani · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's okay. It does give me that creepy vibe, but I found it not that scary. Maybe because I had read worst. Overall, the mystery is good. I can't suspect anyone for now though some characters seem suspicious (here goes my imagination) so, yeah :P

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A crackling start to what looks to be a gripping series. I don't usually do horror, but, this book had me hook, line, and sinker. The artwork was fabulous, as well.

[A. Musquiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Creepy story, awesome art and even cooler characters. I loved it!

[ElsaMakotoRenge · Rating 4 out of 5]

I somehow didn’t realize this was a horror-ish series when I picked up this volume, but luckily it’s more on the mystery/thriller side than a bunch of jump scares or gore or whatever. Still I’m glad I read it in the daytime instead of at night, because it was really creepy! I agreed with the cautious worried twin who kept being like STOP DOING DUMB CRAZY THINGS AT NIGHT, lol.

Anyways. Definitely not recommended to younger kids-this would have scared the crap out of me when I was little-but if you’re looking for a spooky creepy atmospheric manga to read for Halloween, this is a good choice. I would also recommend it to someone that’s not a huge horror fan, because I’m not and I still liked it. It was a good level of creepy, not terrifying. More scary in an atmospheric way than anything else. I’d read the rest of this series, but it’s not on my priority list since I have far too many manga series on my currently reading list anyways.

[Gooooogy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this in grade six and thought I was so cool because it was labeled 15+ 🤣

Would love to read it again to see if it is just as creepy as I remember it being

Also how did I just find out it is an Aussie story???

[estrawberry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was slow at first but towards the end it started getting more entertaining. Would continue reading. I love the art ‘v`

[༶•┈┈୨♡୧┈┈•༶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5⭐️

[Nicole (Reading Books With Coffee) · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m really not sure what to think about The Dreaming. The Dreaming is about Jeannie and Amber, who are twin sisters that get accepted into an Australian boarding school. However, the school is really creepy, since the entire school is surrounded by bushlands…and every once in a while, students disappear into the bushlands, never to be seen or heard from again. The vice-principal is creepy as well, having a hatred for twins.

It was an interesting story, and since this is only the first volume, the rest of story is probably revealed in the following volumes. The artwork is interesting- detailed, but the shading is amazing! I find it especially interesting that Chan manages to convey a certain darkness throughout this volume, and giving off a weird, creepy vibe. This volume didn’t really live up to the horror tag on the back off to the book, but you did get a sense that there was something waiting in the shadows.

Rating: 3 out of 5. I liked it, and it was interesting, but I found it a little hard to get into.

[Robert Beveridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Queenie Chan, The Dreaming, vol. 1 (Tokyopop, 2005)

The Dreaming, projected to be a three-book series, kicks off with this one. Twin sisters Amber and Jeanie are sent to an exclusive boarding school deep in the Australian bush. While they're nieces of the school's headmaster, it seems that the very morning after they leave, she has to head off for three months to a string of conferences and things, so the girls have to face the school alone. And a weird one it is. First, there are some girls who just wander off into the bush and are never seen again. Second, the teachers are an odd lot, capped off by a vice-principal who seems utterly insane (and has something against twins, to the point where their aunt tells them to lie and say they were born a year apart). And, well, things are just not right all around. The girls make a few friends, and life settles down, all except for their odd dreams...

An interesting start to the series. I'll be interested to see where this one goes. ***

[Rebecca]

When I picked this up off the shelf and read the back I though, oh a thriller/mystery. My type of book then. So when I was reading it I did get a little spooked. Later on I read the back and it actually is classed as a horror. Fans of horror this book would suit you fine.

I have a warning about this book too. If you're anything like me and you have an overactive imagination or get scared easily do not read The Dreaming at night all by yourself. I did and I think this made the book even scarier than it had been.

The ending was a cliffhanger that left me wanting more. Luckily I had the next book too so I could just rush into it.

Because this was a manga there were so many scary illustrations. It added to the horror of the story. While I found the illustrations scary I also thought they were really well-drawn.

So if you like horror stories then you will definitely love The Dreaming.

[Eden Silverfox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twins Amber and Jeanie are accepted into Australian boarding school. It seems to be a good thing, but soon after they arrive, they start noticing weird things about the school and of course, their strange dreams. They also find out a secret about the school: sometimes students suddenly vanish.

The story was interesting. There really wasn't a lot revealed in this first volume about the boarding school, the place is very mysterious and it definitely makes me want to finish this series. I want to know more about this place, why Amber and Jeanie are having strange dreams. What exactly has happened to all the students that have suddenly vanished? It was a good first volume and I'm going to read the rest of the books.

[I'mogén · Rating 2 out of 5]

This gets a 2.5 stars
This was one of the mangas that was given to me from a whole bundle and so I had never heard of it, and although the synopsis didn't reel me in the cover certainly intrigued me.
Unfortunately the plot was too flat and dry for me to really enjoy it and the character dynamics wasn't well developed for my tastes.
There wasn't much development or depth so I got through this pretty fast and the art was more of a mature, grown up style, but I didn't like it that much.
This is only a 3 book series so I will eventually get around to reading the rest, but I'll try to read them online or find them in the library. I do want to know how it ends because the cliff hanger for this left me wanting more.

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

[Derek Royal · Rating 3 out of 5]

My daughter has been wanting em to read this one for a long time, and the other day she brought this first volume home from the library for me to read. And I did. I like these kind of recommendations...and, more importantly, a way to bond with Zoe!

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don't read just before you go to bed.

[Alice4170 🌙 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 ⭐️

[SereneReads · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is for the original series and the the revised versions that just released. I read these when they first came out and I truly enjoyed them (there are 3 volumes in both the old and new iterations).

As a librarian who is always looking for new books to add to a middle school library, I'm always hoping to find appropriate manga which is a VERY hard job with a ton of research involved, so I always try to leave notes for others in the same profession. In terms of sexual content, nudity, or even revealing clothes or disrespectful handling of women characters like sexual objects, this series is free of all of it. It's pristine and completely appropriate. This is hard to find even from western-based mangakas and I applaud Queenie Chan for that immensely.

However! I would be very careful giving this to younger middle grades. This is more appropriate for 8th grade on; it's rated 'teens' which is pretty much always 13+ in the manga rating world. The reason for this rating is because of the intense horror elements. Both the original series and the updated series rely on the supernatural as the root cause of the girls who go missing from the school.

Spoilers below:
Characters have unsettling dreams, and in the new version H. P. Lovecraft's fictional works are referenced, including the 'Necronomicon'. The 'Fairy King', which was an Aborignal mythological spirit called a Quinkin in the original, has been changed into a dark Lovecraftian figure from another world and its depiction is honestly more unsettling and more prominent in the story. I honestly did not like this change, as the Quinkins fit the Australian bush theme very well and taught me something new; I also have no appreciation for Lovecraft or his works and was disappointed by this turn. But yeah, if you get the original books, you'll have a story that revolves around spiritual beings called Quinkins as the antagonists—they're depicted as evil spirits that lure children into the bush to steal their souls. (Technically these are the Imjim varients of the Quinkin which are evil, though the image of a depicted one is a Timara, one of the good types of Quinkin.) Oh, and in both versions, the girls try to have a seance/ouija type session at the beginning to try to contact the missing girls from the past; this causes one girl to become possessed/lured away later.

There is also a very prominent collection of macabre images. Skeletons of women in dresses are drawn in mental imagery and in chapter pages; a girl's dead body appears in a small watering hole, though not decayed; paintings depict girls chasing others with knives, which is eventually revealed to be an omen because it later happens to a pair of sisters; blood is a prominent image from weeping sap trees to scenes of self defense in which a character uses an axe to defend herself and her sister from said girls with knives. Nothing is shown of the actual scene using it, but we see her later splattered with blood and the axe has blood all over it. The sister mentions how the other girls will die from blood loss from the wounds, being horrified that her sister essentially killed the others, even in self-defense.

Ghosts/beings from the other dimension/Quinkins possessing girls' forms in the originals show up in the 2nd and 3rd volumes and roam the school in search of other girls to capture/lure away/steal the souls of. Even as an adult, the eerie images made me feel like I might have nightmares after reading them just before bed, haha!

Overall, the series is very engaging thriller/horror mystery. I do prefer the originals, but the updated art was a treat in the newer, revised series. Apparently there will also be a continuation following the revised series.

[Kacey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I originally bought this book back around when it was published in 2005 from my school's book fair.

At the time I had no idea it would be a trilogy, nor did I ever read horror so this was my first dive into the world of this genre, and boy did it scare me and excite me into wanting to read more, even though this book might be considered somewhere between middle grade and YA so it wasn't as scary as horror can get.

Anyway, I forgot about this book for many years after tucking into my bookshelf and going on to read much more popular fantasy/sci-fi/supernatural books that other friends enjoyed. It wasn't until sometime after college that I started serious enjoying and wanting to read horror books again that I remembered I had this manga!

Then I remembered it was a series...

It's not a long series nor was it written by a popular author (unfortunately, as I quite enjoy Queenie's writing) so it took some digging to finally get my hands on the entire set of 3 volumes! I plan to read the next two right after this, but for a short spooky read, (of which as I write this I currently don't know the ending) I think it's worth picking up if you find it at a used book store and are into this genre as well!

[Andrew Mattson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Twin sisters Amber and Jeanie are excited for a new start. They’ve been excepted into an exclusive and well esteemed private boarding school, Greenwich Private College located in the remote Australia bushlands.

Their future seems bright at first especially with their aunt working at the school but when she had to leave die to other matters, the twins start getting uneasy about their new school. The vice principal is an eerie women who seems to hate twins and the students whisper about the many girls who’ve vanished without a trace into the surrounding bushlands never to be found over the years. The school seems to have a dark history and both Amber and Jeanie also have started having vivid identical dreams that may hold the key to figuring out the mysteries surrounding the school’s eerie past.

When another girl mysteriously disappears and then is found dead, the school and Amber and Jeanie are worried that it’s not just rumors but there really is something truly sinister about this place.

This was oddly enough a book I had moved from my childhood bookshelf but realized I never actually read it before but it was a great story and full of spooky delight. I’ll need to look into the rest of this series.

[Hanii Aburame · Rating 5 out of 5]

A body at hand is better than two in the Bushland.
4 1/2* stars

The ookie spooky vibe was perfect with this manga! Everything from the angles the panels were drawn at, the setting of a creepy school in no-mans-land bushland New Zealand, right down to the art itself.

Right off the bat mysteries start coming out of the ancient boarding school wood work and kept me glue to the story till I got to the end making me wish I had gotten more volumes than just the one.

It would have been 5 stars (rounded up the rating) except at times I got confused because some of the dialog was in narration boxes instead of speech bubbles. At times as a character spoke to another it starts out in bubbles then went to boxes like it was internal monolog or narration, making things a little jarring and causing the need to reread to make sure I understood who was talking and what was going on.

I very much look forward to collecting and reading the following volumes. I'm a sucker for the spooky.

[Eyla · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing Queenie Chan's most recent series; Fabled Kingdom, I decided to read one of her previous works when I saw it at my local library. Of course, I wasn't expecting it to be similar to FK considering it's a horror story but it could have been written by a completely different author for how different it was. The art is nice (Queenie Chan has improved since this series but it's still appealing) and the detail in the clothing is stunning.
The plot is what drew me in though, just as it should be. The horror is on point with the classic school girl goes missing type of story but the writing style/drawing style keeps it fresh and interesting. Again, this series is only a trilogy and a quick read once you get down and read it so I'm definitely going to pick up the rest of the trilogy.

[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!

[Jazelyn Cihanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. If you don't know what its about its about these twins who go to a new school covered by bushes far from home but the school vice-principal hates twins. In the result of that the twins aunt had told the vice-principal that they were just sisters in order to get them into the school. The twins did start looking around but ran into the vice-principal and were pretty scared because they knew she didn't like twins at all. I'm not so far into the book that I know what happens to them but I am hoping that they sneak their way through the whole school year without the vice-principal finding out. I would definitely recommend reading it and the whole series as well.

[kuristina- tabreez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this congruently with experiencing the first chapter of The House in Fata Morgana for the first time, which I believe only further positively impacted its influence.
The art, the story, and everything else in this graphic novel is so eerie and really pulls the reader in. It would only take me but a page to become very immersed in the world Queenie Chan was attempting to weave and I feel that this series surely has not received enough recognition. That being said, it's going to be getting an updated rerelease with a new company this year (2023) so I am looking forward to that and I'm hoping it revitalizes its recognition.
This creepy mystery horror feels akin to a fun horror mystery visual novel and I very much enjoyed it.

[nikysavi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Imam interesantnu priču sa ovom mangom (možda). Jednom, pre mnogo godina, čitali sam neku mangu u knjižari, kada moj otac je bio stajao u redu da uzme školski atlasi. Zapamtili sam samo: plavu boju korica, učenice u internatu, i duhove.
U početku ovoj sedmici videli sam mangu na veb stranici second hand-a i njeno korice izgledalo je poznato – “The Dreaming”.
Radnja je zanimljiva, ali mnogi karakteri su veoma emocionalni. Ne znam, to je bio malo dosadno čitati za mene. Mislim da neću da čitam dalje.

[Shyla Colt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm so torn on this. I felt like there was a lot of potential. The creep factor was high. I was into the settings, and the art was pretty good. The story was too stretched out too far. They tried so hard to maintain mystique I ended being more irritated than interesting. At the end I had no clue what was actually going on, and I don't have a desire to continue .

[Kamaria Laing · Rating 3 out of 5]

This manga sucks you in and is so creepy! I read it again after having read it in middle school and thought about it at least 12 years later without recollection of what happens in it. I read it last night and actually got so scared that I’m hesitant about reading the second volume. The art is very well done and the story line and mystery are interesting. This makes me want to read more mangas.