Reading For The Heck Of It

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker is a dystopian sci-fi novel that takes place in a small town in California. (Is it still dystopian/apocalyptic if it's contained in one area?) The book begins with a young girl in college who is a bit of a misfit on her dorm floor. She doesn't even have much of a relationship with her roommate...and then that roommate doesn't wake up the next morning. This is the start of a sleeping sickness that spreads throughout the city radiating out from the college campus. Written with multiple narrative lines and only a few likable characters this probably isn't the one for you if you're looking for a more straightforward contemporary fiction. This book explores what happens when a biological contagion that is not fully understood (and clearly not prepared for) rapidly spreads and the ensuing chaos. I'm talking about governmental influence, hazmat suits, and lock-down quarantine with all the requisite fear and panic, ya'll. This is disaster relief (contemporary fiction style) meets sci-fi (those afflicted are experiencing REM i.e. dreaming...and it might be precognition). This was a fast paced book (I zipped right through it) which I enjoyed for the most part but I was left feeling like there were a lot of loose ends that the author didn't adequately tie off. So this was ultimately a middle of the road read for me. 5/10

What I'm Currently Reading: A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness