Tormented by his meaningless life, Flint searches for answers to the questions of Love, Faith, and Wisdom, but as he searches, he stumbles into a world with no boundaries, and terrified, he faces torturous situations night after night when he closes his eyes to sleep.
Having already exhausted the path of doctors and shrinks, Flint attempts to solve his problem through some research, all the while tolerating his powerlessness in The Dream, until he can figure out a way to defeat the thing that continues to haunt him.
Alone and afraid, Flint attempts to defeat the negative aspects that plague his existence, both in The Dream and in The Wake, finding he has no real chance but to live his life and seek answers, and hopefully, liberate himself from the pain he keeps experiencing.
This book was interesting. I particularly liked the abrupt and therefor realistic ending.
The book is ultimately a commercial for western Buddhism in the form of fiction. But it’s obviously heartfelt and it is very honestly written.
It styles itself as philosophical fiction but I don’t that is a fair descriptor, given the narrow range of philosophy presented.
The book’s treatment of women is also somewhat odd, while again the intentions I think are good, namely to have women in an attempted realistic and intellectually respectful role, it seems their presence at all was somewhat contrived, as if a narrative without females would have been unacceptable.I wonder about the motivations behind this.
I like that some characters are presented only for their impact on the main character. In movies and mainstream books there is a tendency for the author to “do something” plot wise with everyone in the book not explicitly present as transient and an extra, and this creates a staged feeling. Like, Movie Physics dictates that if you see something, it never just happened to be there, its probably part of the plot because they had to take time to film it and edit it in.
Now writing is the same way to an extent. But this author chose to break that convention and it made the whole thing feel more real. In real life people can have moderate impact, they aren’t always either plot points or extras.
I like the nearly seamless integration of what readers would probably consider fantasy elements into the rather down to earth tone established to that point. And here again we have the break with convention since the antagonist of the book isn’t really explored, much less confronted or defeated.
For those interested in integrating mediation into their life this book probably has some useful nuggets but it’s a strange way to deliver them, it’s like picking up the newspaper and finding a nice poem. It’s cool but it’s not what you expected.
Bottom line is the book is good but not great, it was pretty well worth my time, though I must admit I probably wouldn’t have finished it had I not promised to just because I’m a huge SciFi fan and I’ve got some issues with the whole Buddhism/meditation fad. (http://underlore.com/TBA/?p=1053)
To read this book for free go here or just search the title from your device. (I read on the iPhone via Stanza.)
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