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Dreamland
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Dreamland
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Dreamland
Ebook329 pages5 hours

Dreamland

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this ebook

From immensely talented debut author Robert L. Anderson comes a stunning, complex, and imaginative story about the fine line between dreams and reality that will appeal to fans of Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle.

Odea Donahue has been able to travel through people’s dreams since she was six years old. Her mother taught her the three rules of walking: Never interfere. Never be seen. Never walk the same person’s dream more than once. Dea has never broken the rules.

Then a mysterious new boy, Connor, comes to town. For the first time in her life, Dea feels normal. But both Dea and Connor have secrets, and as she is increasingly drawn to Connor’s dreams—and nightmares—the boundary between worlds begins to deteriorate, putting everyone she loves in danger.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperTeen
Release dateSep 22, 2015
ISBN9780062338693
Unavailable
Dreamland
Author

Robert L. Anderson

Robert L. Anderson grew up in Brooklyn and graduated college in 2004 with a degree in philosophy. Since then, he has lived in five states and twelve countries, and on three continents. Dreamland is his first novel.

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Reviews for Dreamland

Rating: 3.710083951260504 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

119 ratings12 reviews

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Beautifully written historical novel that reall gives a sense of New York in the early 20th. Unfortunately the climax is a bit of a let down. Still, well worth reading.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dreamland, titled after the Coney Island amusement park of the same name that was in its heyday at the time, starts with a tale from Trick the Dwarf about a bizarre twist of fate and the love story that resulted. The story then mushrooms out to take in the points of view of a couple notorious New York City gangsters, a factory girl involved in early union activity, a prostitute, a Tammany Hall politician, and, oddly enough, Dr. Sigmund Freud. With these characters, Kevin Baker vividly brings to life the downtown New York of the early 1900s, plagued by crime and poverty but also somehow larger than life and full of possibility. He was astonished, for the first time, to see how many people there were and how fast they were moving. Straddling each avenue were high steel girders, pylons holding up the trains that raced madly through the night, sometimes two at a time, in opposite directions, until they made the whole street shake. It was a frantic, crowded, nightmare world that he could not wait to join.Baker's gangsters are based on real historical gang members, with their stories tweaked and their lives and motives re-humanized. These gangsters disappoint their parents, immigrate from Eastern Europe in search of a better life that never seems to materialize. They care for their sisters and their lovers, all in between killing and maiming. Naturally, there is a love story, and a good one at that, between an exiled gangster and the girl he meets on Coney Island. There is no small amount of crooked politicking. There is disturbing violence, both random, provoked, and shocking, in the case of the early labor movement. With Dreamland, Baker paints a picture of a city struggling through its many growing pains and trying to come of age. While there were definitely some storylines I could have easily done without (adios doctors Freud and Jung - what are you guys doing here anyway?), I was, for the most part, totally taken in by Dreamland and its gritty, larger than life portrait of New York City at a pivotal point in history. Baker ably breathes life into each of his many characters and marches them steadily toward an explosive conclusion that expertly weaves many narrative strands into one pivotal day on Coney Island. "A magnified Prater," he sniffed to Ferenczi and Brill, referring to the cheesy midway in the Vienna park - but the Prater was like a summer garden party compared to this. Everything louder, bigger, more hysterical - more American.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Anyone have other suggestions for fiction about Coney Island?
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This novel set at Coney Island and other sites in New York City in the early 20th Century is as just as concerned with the place and time period as it is with its plot. But there is enough plot to hold it together and it kept my interest. A few characters have some heft, but most seem like representations of a type.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I finished reading this book just as the tv programme Boardwalk Empire aired in the UK. The book tells the tales of a colourful variety of characters in the post-depression era, all connected by Dreamland amusement park at Coney Island. There is a politician, a gangster, a female immigrant and Trick the Dwarf, a performer at the amusements.For me the book belonged to Esse, daughter of Eastern European immigrants and an underpaid seamstress in The Triangle - a hazardous factory. She takes trips to Coney Island every Sunday to escape her homelife, and one week meets a handsome stranger. She doesn't yet know about his connections, nor he hers.The historical research that's gone into the book is very evident, and that alone would make me recommend it to others. Strange to be reminded of a time when food and material possessions were hard fought for. I haven't yet watched Boardwalk Empire, but I hope it's every bit as good as Dreamland.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It makes sense that a historian like Kevin Baker would write something as epic and sweeping as Dreamland. It is a beautifully blended tale of fiction and reality. Events like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire and people like Sigmund Freud and politics like Tammany Hall exist in harmony with fictional Coney Island gangsters and seedy carnival performers. It's a world of underground rat fights, prostitution, gambling, and the sheer violent will to survive. It's dirty and tragic. A love story hidden behind the grime, the colorful lights, the tricks, and the chaotic noise of New York.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Kevin Baker's sweeping 1999 novel "Dreamland" has dozens of characters and, fortunately, a list of those characters at the beginning of the book to help readers tell who is who. Several of the characters in this story that takes place in New York City during the summer of 1909 are real people, including Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, who were visiting the United States that summer, and Thomas A. Edison.Because there are so many characters and so many subplots, a summary of the novel is difficult. Women working long hours for low wages in the garment district try to organize a union. One Jewish gangster is hiding from another Jewish gangster on Coney Island and happens to fall in love with the other gangster's sister. A Tammany Hall leader tries to hold the corrupt organization together as he gradually goes mad because of venereal disease. Dwarfs flock to Coney Island to live in the Little City, built to scale for one of their number, the Mad Carlotta, to rule as queen.There's a lot going on here, but it makes fascinating reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Set in New York City of the early Twentieth Century, Baker's novel draws on the actual immigrant history of the time and strips off the romantic veneer to show us the ugly truth of the times. People were routinely exploited, politics was corrupt, the police were corrupt and the American Dollar was king. Set in the middle of all this, Baker gives us some incredibly complex characters, some modeled after real life people of the times, and follows them through their daily lives.Not a kind picture of our American roots, but still an important glimpse in to the past nonetheless. Suggested for those with a taste for off beat (but real life) characters, a taste for historical fiction or an interest in one of the great industrial tragedies of the early Twentieth Century.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dea Donahue is a relative newcomer to Fielding and is already an outcast. She and her mother are both considered odd. Dea is odd she has been able to travel through people's dreams since she was a small child. In fact, she has to travel through others dreams or she gets sick. Her mother also walks through dreams and she gave Dea three rules. The most important is that she should never walk the same person's dreams more than once.The rules get hard to follow when Connor moves in across the street. He becomes her friend and doesn't drop her when he finds out that she is the school outcast. When she walks in his dreams she learns that he has a terrible tragedy in his past. When he was six, his mother and little brother were killed and popular opinion is convinced the Connor is the murderer. Connor has been left with nightmares about the faceless murderers.When Dea walks through his dreams a second time to try to see if she can see the murderers' faces, she is breaking her mother's rules and begins to be chased by monsters herself. Her mother has disappeared and the police are looking for her accusing her of fraud and running cons. While searching for her mother, the monsters come to the waking world and cause Dea to have a car accident. She wakes in the mental ward of the hospital.Connor helps her escape and they go on the run. Dea is running from both real world and dream monsters. She runs to the dream world to search for her mother where she learns some pretty unbelievable things.I enjoyed this story both for the world building and for the relationship between Dea and Connor. I think teen readers will enjoy this imaginative story.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I'm really not sure how to rate this book. I liked it, but at times it seemed very far fetched, and stretched the limits of believeability.Dea and her mother are constantly moving. As soon as Dea is accustomed to a new place, her mother suddenly tells her to pack up. Dea and her mother possess a unique ability of going into others dreams. There are rules to this process, and when Dea falls in love with a young man who listens, who cares and does not make fun of her, she breaks the rules and visits his dreams often.Dea's mother always avoids mirrors, stating that is how the monsters can watch them. In a rented house filled with clocks that chime on time, Dea is learning to rebel. No longer wanting to move along. She know craves friends, whereas before classmates made fun of her and she learned to cope, now that she has Connor and another friend, she wants to stay.Her mother is found by the monsters, and Dea must try to find her.I finished the book, but can't recommend this tall tale.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This young adult book is about a teen girl (Odea) living with her mother and they have an amazing skill. They can enter and observe other people's dreams. Since they move around a lot this causes her to have very few friends until a boy named Conner befriends her. When she enters his dreams she will discover an entire new world in people's dream life. Her mother turns up missing and Odea eventually must enter this dream world to search for her. This is obviously part of a series but it is a very engaging first book with a cast of interesting characters.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Review courtesy of Dark Faerie TalesQuick & Dirty: A chilling novel about a dreamwalker and the consequences of her breaking the rules.Opening Sentence: “Freaks.”The Review:Dea can walk dreams. Along with her mother, they travel from city to city, never settling. Dea knows the rules of dreamwalking: never get spotted. Never travel the same person’s dream more than once. Never interfere. When Dea breaks a rule after she creates a connection with a boy named Connor, her whole life comes unraveling at the seams. It begins when strange monsters stalk her sleeping (and waking) moments. And then everything begins to crumble as Dea struggles to fix her mistakes and save those whom she loves.Dreamland caught my eye from the beginning. It’s cover, a dreary landscape juxtaposed by the skyscrapers hanging from above, was overlaid with a dark color scheme that spoke of intrigue and suspense. And then, that tagline: dreams come true. So do nightmares. I mean, how could one not be drawn in? Luckily enough, I got my hands on a copy of the galley and started reading almost immediately. It’s been a little bit since I read the novel, so I had to skim through to remember the events. Let me tell you, although there is a slow beginning, Dreamland has an abundance of chilling scenes and a beautiful alternate world of dreams that was so much fun to read about.Connor is the love interest in this story, and I enjoyed their romance. They bonded in the classic way, a normal way, over conversations and cheeseburgers and the such. But as much as Dea tried to deny it, she wasn’t a normal girl, and her glimpses into Connor’s dreams were not normal either. And Connor is the beginning to her undoing – once she starts peeking into dreams more than once, the monsters begin to appear. Nevertheless, watching them work through difficult times together and grow as a couple was very cute. Connor was suffering from the death of his father, Dea was suffering from – well, a lot of unfortunate events were happening in her life. Although she had to keep secrets from Connor, and inevitably that backfires, I did like their story.The dreams are such a cool, unique part of the novel that I really loved. I am really intrigued by dreams, and always have been. I love how all of the things I wish could happen in reality can come true when the line between sleeping and waking begins to blur. The idea of a girl who could walk dreams, and had a connection to dreams; that really lured me in. I thought the monsters that invaded and stalked through dreams was chilling enough, but the dreamscape expanded into a whole dreamworld. Though the story began somewhat slow, what an incredible ending – so much tension, and all my questions were answered.Lets be real; my favorite genre is probably fantasy. But not just any fantasy; it has to be a fantasy with eerie, creepy suspense and chilling scenes. Probably why Splintered by Howard is so incredible to me and why I’ve read it numerous times over. Also, probably why I enjoyed this novel. I loved the main character, the plotline, and the complexity of the other characters. I loved the haunting betrayal, the lovely romance, and the intrigue of the dreams – so yes, I would encourage you to pick it up.Notable Scene:The lights. They would see the lights and know she had interfered.They would find her.She remembered what her mother had said all those years earlier: she must follow the rules or the monsters would find her.FTC Advisory: HarperTeen provided me with a copy of Dreamland. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.