2025/156: Dreamhunter Duet — Elizabeth Knox

[tamaranth]

2025/156: Dreamhunter Duet — Elizabeth Knox

'I was finished. I wanted time to stop, and to let me stop with it. And I wanted revenge.
I ... said to the land, 'Bury me, and rise up. Rise up and crush them all.' [loc. 5131]

Rereads, after reading Kings of This World -- which is set in the same alt-Aotearoa-New Zealand, rather later than the Dreamhunter duet, which begins in 1906. My original reviews from (OMG) 2005 and 2007 are here: The Rainbow Opera and The Dream Quake.

The link points to the first of two volumes: the second has only just become available on Amazon.

I remembered much more of the first book than of the second. I was struck this time round by the powerful narrative of Lazarus Hame, a convict, as recited to Laura the dreamhunter: the alternate history that he describes is quite chilling. I also noted the lack of an indigenous population in Southland: this is a version of New Zealand (South Island only) that was not inhabited by the Maori, though there are indications of a relatively amicable entente between the European colonists and the Shackle Islanders. 

There is a Place where dreamhunters can go to experience location-specific dreams, and bring them back to be shared at Dream Palaces. In the first novel the origins of the Place are a mystery: in the second, the genesis of the Place is explained -- though it is distinctly non-linear. There is something (several somethings) that might be a golem. There is tragedy, teenage romance, and government corruption; despair and redemption; joy, and the Biblical story of Lazarus and the song he heard in the tomb.

I am still thinking about these books, aided by this spoilery blogpost from the author. (And I am now tempted to reread everything else that Elizabeth Knox has ever written.)

I love the emotional precision and clarity of Knox's writing, and the sense of time being flexible and traversible: and I love the importance of love in many forms and expressions. And I love the complexity of these books. 

Comments

[sushiflop]

Have you by any chance read The Absolute Book? I have really loved Knox's stuff before but did not like Absolute Book at all and am curious to read others' thoughts.

[tamaranth]

I have! -- https://tamaranth.dreamwidth.org/1063432.html
I do think it's quite different to her earlier works and I don't (yet?) like it as much as, for instance, Black Oxen: but it brought me joy.

[sushiflop]

You liked it more than I did - which I am glad of because I was heartbroken to find it so unpalatable :')