Henry Reviews: "Dreamscape" by Antonia Rachel Ward
It's like if Alice in Wonderland met Keanu Reeves and they made Neon Goth Rock together
One of the things that is particularly notable about the way 80s and 90s cyberpunk sci-fi was envisioned is that nothing is broken.
What I mean is that the virtual worlds described in pieces like Tron, Neuromancer, Snow Crash, The Matrix and others, while representing the kind of systemic corruption that is omnipresent in the genre, aren’t malfunctioning. At every point, even when being infected by viruses that cause brain damage or near-infinite copies of Agent Smith, the virtual environments themselves have a robust and inherently well-constructed quality to them that is frankly laughable to anyone who’s ever had to maintain software across different versions of Windows.
The reality of the virtual realities we interface with these days is that they are held together with the digital equivalent of sellotape and string. Code works until it doesn’t and then it requires vigilant and constant updates lest it become a buggy, unreliable and even dangerous piece of software.
A contemporary cyberpunk tale that seeks to depict a virtual world, then, would need to engage with the way that a virtual space would eventually become abandonware. The way the fabric of its reality would slowly peel back. The way access became more difficult over time, and the way the userbase becomes more and more dependent on their own jerry-rigged upgrades to keep the system even slightly functional.
Enter Dreamscape, A novel by Antonia Rachel Ward, out October 24, 2023.
To repeat the disclaimer from my last review: I received this book as an Advance Review Copy, and I don’t write reviews for books I don’t like. My talking about it here means that I consider it good enough to go buy, so go buy it if you’re after a Gothic Cyberpunk Fairytale.
I know they say not to judge a book by its cover, but the ethereal, neon tinted electric glow of the cover is exactly the kind of thing you’re going to find in these pages. It doesn’t have the frenetic pacing of a lot of other cyberpunk media and it absolutely reads like a contemporary fairy story. In between the twisting shapes and bright lights, in cathedrals and shrines made from impossible geometries, Ward picks and weaves her way through the story. At any point, I was expecting to see a caterpillar smoking a pipe declaring everyone to be mentally unsound, but it never falls to parody of an existing world. Instead, it dances its way around its universe, leaving the reader just enough time to breathe and take it all in. It lets you come to understand it all right as it picks up the pace, snapping in and out of reality and across different countries in an extremely well crafted crescendo.
The metaverse/virtual world/cyberspace in this novel is its namesake. The Dreamscape was an initiative prior to the books start but it has been made illegal due to the negative effects of long term use. Those who regularly and illegally access the Dreamscape (“Scapers”) begin to have trouble distinguishing reality from the Dreamscape before too long and exhibit symptoms of addiction and withdrawals when out of it. In lurid detail, we’re told of the milky eyes, the waking nightmares, and the confusion felt by those who have spent too long in the Dreamscape. Meanwhile, inside the ‘Scape, we’re shown the ruptures; broken pieces of code that manifest as gaping voids in the would-be paradise. The place is slowly collapsing, see, and there are rumours of two gods who are fighting each other for the soul of the Dreamscape.
The fact that the Dreamscape is a broken and incomplete thing, outlawed and left to haphazard community efforts to keep going, is perfect as a reflection for the cast of this book. The primary protagonist, Wren, is an escapee from a less-than-ideal home life in England, a rupture of her very own. Her stepfather is controlling and angry, and her mother complicit. It’s this situation that’s caused her to flee to America, and for her her younger sister Bethany to seek the soothing company of the Dreamscape, to disappear into one of the ruptures from which nobody has ever returned. When Wren finds out, she decides to follow her despite it being unlikely that Bethany can be found, let alone rescued.
Meanwhile, a star ballet performer, Lia, is caught between her addict rockstar ex-boyfriend and her jealous and controlling movie-star husband. Her ex is a drug, alcohol, and Dreamscape addict that despite his tendencies continues to occupy space in both her and her new husband’s mind. Her husband is a volatile man who flies into a rage when she begins to compose a new dance to a soundtrack of her ex’s music. As she works on navigating the space between the feelings for her ex and the tightening clamp of the expectations her husband has over her life, she starts to realise that her ex’s addling by the Dreamscape may have more to it than she ever realised.
To explain specific interactions would be giving away one of my favourite parts of this book. Ward has woven the world in such a way that the characters interface with each other as much as they do reality and the Dreamscape, and I do think weaving is the right term. Each character (and the Dreamscape itself) seems to worry at errant threads of their existence, rubbing them and testing them until the fibres release and connect into one another. Eventually, it’s hard to tell where the meaning for one ends and the next begins. I thoroughly enjoyed coming to understand each of the characters through the eyes of the others.
As you might be able to tell, a lot of this story follows themes of redemption, addiction, emancipation and learning to understand yourself. What impressed me was the way Ward has drawn these themes into the visual language of the Dreamscape so vividly. The ‘Scape as it’s presented morphs according to the characters’ emotions and predicaments, and they see the world as they see themselves reflected back into it. At every turn, I found myself dazzled by the world Ward has created, drawn in by the bright lights but staying as I tried to understand the ways things begin to fall apart once they’re broken.
Dreamscape is available on Amazon in both paperback and ebook formats.
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