The Memory of Lost Dreams by Joseph MinartMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
While I can congratulate the author for tackling such an imaginative, dystopian science fiction novel, I cannot say I really enjoyed it. There were obvious links to Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World, but the narrative style and pace of this story left a lot to be desired, when compared to those classics. In addition, I discovered later that there are two authors who are credited with writing the book: Davon Custis as well as Joseph Minart, which was confusing. Raylan Hawkes, the main character, was ineffectual but convincing throughout the story and at times seemed to be an unlikely hero. However, he was suitably curious and confused enough to drag the plot forward when it was becoming dragging and ponderous.
The world-building aspect of the tale was good if a little disjointed occasionally. Once I became aware of the evil potential and the concept of Jean-Pierre’s quantum-powered REQUIEM device I wanted to know much more. I rapidly turned pages and that was the main problem with the narrative. It was too full of verbosity, clichés and loquaciousness; contemporary clichés such as ‘I had to think outside the box’ did not fit well for events some 700 years into the future!
On top of all that there was not enough technical detail about how it might work, especially for fans of Sci-fi like me. The inventor of REQUIEM, Matthieu Fletcher and other characters like Anthony, Rachel, and Aurelen needed a lot more ‘fleshing out’ rather than the constant repetition of irrelevant information about clothing etc. Although towards the end of the book some surprising scenes between Rachel and Raylan lifted the story for me – but no spoiler here!
The dystopian world that Raylan encounters is definitely dark and threatening as expected with an evil protagonist, like Jean-Pierre, and a world subjugated by the tyrannical ‘Chief Lord’. All through the book there were strange choices of adverbs and adjectives which stopped me reading and made me feel a re-edit was needed. The poor writing and style badly let this book down for me.
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