In an unnamed Victorian-era city, Celeste Temple, Dr. Abelard Svenson, and Cardinal Chang uncover a grand conspiracy involving German princes, manor lords, dukes, and all manner of government officials. The plotters seem bent on taking over the world by means of a mysterious alchemical science that can transmute memories and dreams onto glass, which then can be "read" by others, producing an erotic euphoria that either seduces or destroys. Temple, Svenson, and Chang vow to undermine the cabal, each for his or her own personal reason, even as they come to deeply care for one another.
"The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters" is furiously entertaining. And here's the rub. As adventure novel, in the tradition of H. R. Haggard and even more recently Dan Brown, it utterly succeeds. But as a literary mystery, which it also seems to want to be, it misses the mark. There is a vast difference between slowly revealing the secrets of the plot and laying down clues for the reader to put together. The cabal has at its center a great and terrible secret, involving both its infernal glass technology and the people who control it. What are their motives? Who is the traitor? What, at last, drives the greater dream of power? Dahlquist takes us through the answers more like a teacher than a trickster.
Standing far and above the ultimately unsatisfying story are three sympathetic and remarkably fleshed-out characters. Miss Temple is prudish yet daring, strangely detached from her own desires yet willing to explore them. She is never a mere damsel in distress. Dahlquist writes her as a formidable fighter and strategist. The mild Dr. Svenson holds on to a heartbreaking sense of loyalty, even as those he was sworn to honor betray him at every turn. His fear of heights affects him in preposterous ways, but his response to his harrowing escapades somehow makes these outlandish scenes thrilling.
