The Never Pages by Graham Thomas

The Never Pages by Graham Thomas
Buy The Never Pages by Graham Thomas at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Category: Fantasy
Reviewer: Jill Murphy
Summary: A journey through a dreamscape - surreal, sometimes frightening, and always affecting. We thoroughly enjoyed this psychedic roadtrip and love story.
Buy? Yes	Borrow? Yes
Pages: 538	Date: October 2010
Publisher: TheNeverPress
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 0956742203
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There are two rules that the Dream Investigator must follow:
1. Document everything.
2. Keep moving forward.

Master G is in search of his one true love, Lucy. But Lucy is lost in the NeverRealm, the dimension that separates the living from whatever comes after. In the NeverRealm, memories do not exist. So how is Master G - the Dream Investigator - to find her? From the very first moment, his journey into the NeverRealm is destroying his mind, turning thoughts and knowledge and recollection to sand, shifting sand. He will need courage to face the nightmarish environment. He will need fortitude to resist the degeneration. He will need to find Brekker, his unreliable scientist friend. And he'll need the companionship of Paisley, a dog named after a carpet...

... and so begins an insane, psychedic quest, filled with strangeness and eerie apparations. The liquid man, at least, will make your skin crawl!

I thoroughly enjoyed The Never Pages. I've never read anything quite like it. Master G, the protagonist and dream investigator, wanders through the NeverRealm in what feels like a rather random manner. It doesn't make much sense - but then it's not supposed to. Dreams trick us at the best of times, so imagine living in a dream; one that's often more of a nightmare. It's eeries and otherworldly and utterly surreal. And often, it's horrific. But the thing that propels both protagonist and reader through the pages is love. Master G won't give up the search for Lucy, and you don't want him to.

I was hooked on this strange world and Master G's way of looking at it right from the very first page which takes place in a railway station's waiting room and has short, staccato, shocking sentences - Man dead. Hat on the floor, shadow burnt on the wall. Shadow had three fingers. Dead. Probably for the best. Train still not approaching. How could any reader resist that?!

This is a very different novel than Maria & The Devil by Thomas, which we've also reviewed here at Bookbag, but you can see similarities. What happens in the mind is often much more significant that what happens to the body. There are no lengths humans won't go to for love. Human beings will always carry on, will always move forwards. You can never be sure how things will turn out (and that's as close as I'm going to get to hinting at the unexpected and wonderful way this novel ends).

It's not a light read. At all. But it is a rewarding one. The Never Pages comes recommended to all readers who like books that confound them.

They're very different novels, but other books with a dreamlike feel about them include Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil, The Blue Door by Andre Brink and Mr Shivers by Robert Jackson Bennett.

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You can read more book reviews or buy The Never Pages by Graham Thomas at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Never Pages by Graham Thomas at Amazon.com.

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