Somnium by Deirdre Swinden
A Horror Book Review by Carmilla Voiez
Deirdre Swinden presents a dark and disturbing world in Somnium. A place where corporations prioritise profit over consumers’ safety – if you can imagine such a thing.
The book is full of beautiful descriptions and imagery. The dialogue is realistic and drives the story forward. Swinden negotiates the balance between showing and telling expertly in all but one chapter. The result is a tense and thrilling Sci-Fi/Horror novel.
The main character, Gillian, and her love interest, Nathan, aren’t perfect – thank the goddess – and I love Deirdre Swinden’s descriptions of their physical scars:
“fingernails playing the faded lines of scar tissue on her right cheek as if they were guitar strings.”
“a gash across his face that functioned like a culvert when it rained.”
So, what’s the story about?
Gillian has bad dreams. As far as she can recall, she’s always been plagued by nightmares and monsters she must fight while she sleeps. Sometimes those battles spill into the real world with painful consequences – breaking her brother’s wrist, her mother’s teeth, her father’s ribs. In desperation, her family send her to a mental hospital hoping for a cure. But if Gillian’s dreams can be trusted, the asylum is Hell on Earth – a place of nightmarish abuse and human monsters.
“Hannibal Lecter decorated his thousand-room memory palace with frescoes. Sherlock Holmes built a mind palace to store his facts. But Gillian Hardie had trapped the horrors of her dreams behind endless spirals of locked doors in an asylum like no other.”
It isn’t clear, at least not to me, when Gillian was exposed to Somnium’s dream advertising technology, but after her mind rejected it. Her dreams changed and became dangerous, potentially fatal. Enter her guardian angel, a nightmare warrior who goes by the name of Nathan Keller. He jumps into her dreams to battle her demons while gradually falling in love with her. For her part, Gillian avoids sleep as much as possible with the help of stimulants. The main story begins when something happens to prevent Gillian from waking up.
Somnium has a compelling plot that carries the reader through even when the large cast of characters becomes confusing. Although we spend a lot of time inside Gillian’s head, it’s still hard to truly understand and connect with her. I suspect this is due to frequent narrative shifts between different characters. Other point-of-view characters include Dex, a technician at Somnium, and Nathan, Gillian’s nightmare warrior. There are at least a dozen characters, most of whom work at Somnium. And sometimes I found it necessary to flick back to earlier chapters to remind myself who the side characters were and how they fitted into the plot.
The story treads into cliche and archetype territory, a risk in dreamworld-based stories, and even the “real-world” villain feels like a caricature. Despite this, Somnium offers plenty of thrills and chills. And for those readers who love discovering a new series. The ending of Somnium allows plenty of room for sequels, and I suspect we’ll get the opportunity to revisit this world.
Somnium by Deirdre Swinden
Immerse yourself in a terrifying blend of psychological horror and high-tech science fiction in this riveting novel where dreams can kill. Gillian Hardie experiences nightmares so intense they threaten her very existence. Thanks to a glitch in Somnium Corporation’s groundbreaking dream advertising technology. Every night, her sleep unleashes monsters that her body reacts to as if they were real, pushing her to the edge of despair.
Armed with her lucid dreaming skills. Gillian battles these horrors, but when an accident traps her in a perpetual dream state. She must rely on Nathan Keller, a nightmare warrior, and Dex Cooper, an Operator, to navigate this nightmarish reality. With her darkest fears manifesting like never before, Gillian faces a race against time to survive a threat that could unleash unimaginable horrors from the depths of her mind.
Dive into a story that explores the shadowy boundaries of fear and technology. For fans of cutting-edge psychological thrillers and high-stakes survival horror. This novel promises a journey through the darkest corridors of the human psyche, where the next dream could be your last. Join Gillian in her fight against the darkest corners of her mind—before it’s too late.
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