Wednesday, April 20, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Prison of Sleep by Tim Pratt

 



Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on April 26, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Prison of Sleep is the second book in Tim Pratt's Sci-Fi Multiverse-hopping duology which began last year with Doors of Sleep (my review here).  Doors of Sleep was the fun tale of Zax, an extremely good-natured man who found himself in a different universe/world every time he fell asleep as he attempted to help as people on as many worlds as possible, discovered a few companions, and tried to deal with rough situations that came both from being dropped into new worlds constantly and from facing off against a sinister mad scientist who wanted to use Zax's power to sinister ends.  The story was told from the perspective of Zax's journal entries, and while it wasn't a comedy, it was still highly entertaining and enjoyable, even if it never really did anything super interesting - Zax was just a really charismatic lead.  And then the story ended with a major cliffhanger, so I was more than happy to pick up the sequel on NetGalley once it became available.  

Prison of Sleep splits the narrative in half - with the story alternating between continuing Zax's perspective, a little while after the cliffhanger from the last book, and the perspective of Ana, Zax's long lost love.  In this way we continue to follow Zax's adventure while getting caught up with both what happened to Ana, her own perspective, and the new world that Zax discovered in the last book's cliffhanger.  The result is still enjoyable...and yet some of the shine is off, as a bit of the wonder of what might happen is kind of gone with Zax's journey no longer random and varied, and Ana's story just feels in large part like a retread, leading to a conclusion that works, but well just also feels kind of underwhelming.  If you really liked Doors of Sleep and want another enjoyable work, you'll find it here, but otherwise, this doesn't really take the duology to a higher level.  


--------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Years ago, Zaxony "Zax" Delatree began accidentally traveling through the multiverse of worlds, mysteriously traveling to a new world every time he falls asleep.  Through his adventures, he always tried to help the people he found, and even managed to pick up a few companions along the way, who could travel with him as long as they were asleep in his arms...for being awake while traveling between worlds seems to drive people mad....such as the woman Zax loved, Ana.  Zax never imagined he'd see Ana ever again, or that he'd ever return to any of the worlds he visited, or that he'd every get any explanation for why he travels the way he does.  

But then Ana somehow turned up again in his life, with answers to his mysterious traveling, and news of a dangerous enemy that is using his travels to doom everything.  And then that enemy struck, and split Zax and Ana once more.  

With nothing else to do, and no other way to reunite with Ana, Zax finds himself traveling the worlds once more, this time on a directed path after this new enemy, hoping to stop them once and for all.  But against an enemy hoping to use Zax and his friends to destroy all the worlds in service of an imprisoned godlike power, can Zax's good natured desire to always help really make a difference?  
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Prison of Sleep is told in a dual narrative.  Every other chapter, starting with chapter 1, is told like the first book: as if it is a piece of Zax's new journal, with chapter titles detailing in quick entries all the things that will happen in that chapter, as Zax's journey continues forward.  The other half is instead told from Ana's perspective, as she also adds her own journal entries, with Ana's entries mostly taking place during book 1, as she catches the reader up on everything that happened to her from the time she went insane viewing what she saw between worlds to the events that happened between books to where the book is now.  

The stories are a bit uneven.  Zax's story is still enjoyable, as Zax is a charismatic character who is just way too easy to like in his resourcefulness, his trustfulness, and his optimistic disposition, which draws companions to him even as they wind up generally being more cynical and practical than he is.  And that continues here, as he meets a new companion - Zaveta of the Broken Wheel, a fun low-technology-aware warrior who is really strong and honor bound but also clueless about other cultures and gets into messes - and eventually meets up with his old ones.  It also works as he deals with the new antagonists - the Cult of the Worm - and their leader the Prisoner, and tries desperately to understand them in order to persuade them to possibly stop.  And yet, with Zax now driven by a mission - to track down the Cult and hopefully reunite with his friends - his story kind of loses a sense of wonder, as part of the fun of the last book was seeing Zax come to on each world and have to adapt to what he finds there (if not to try to help), and while there's a small amount of that here, it's greatly reduced, to the detriment of this book.  It doesn't help that the new antagonist is kind of bland and uninspiring (and the kind you see in many books these days...including for example, a couple of others written by Pratt!) 

Then there's Ana's story, which starts off interesting as it introduces what happened to her after Zax left her for insane (not intentionally) and explains the Sleepers, an organization who fights to save the multiverse from the aforementioned cult.  Ana's practicality and good nature is also really easy to like - she may not be as pure as Zax, but she's determined to follow his example and do the right thing, and might as well have a "What Would Zax Do" tattooed on her somewhere.  And the companions she meets along this way, from Toros, the leader of the Sleepers to Sorlyn, the one who helps her travel, are also pretty interesting, and add to some of the conflict (especially Toros, who is driven to an ends justify the means approach at times).  

But Ana's story quickly turns into her retracing Zax's footsteps from the last book, and thus feels very much like a "Been there already, nothing new here" moment for much of the book, which just makes her chapters feel pretty pointless.  We know how horrible those antagonists were, or what Zax dealt with, and we don't need to recap their actions when they basically don't play any part in the resolution here at all.  And in a book this short, for like a third of it to basically be recap - and not recap at the beginning but recap spread throughout the book - it's just too much.  

I don't mean to be too down on this novel, which is very readable, and still enjoyable for its short length.  It's never boring, the characters are enjoyable, and well it's really really easy to like and root for Zax and his friends.  But it never captures the high of Zax, his biological engineering friend Minna, and AI Vicki traveling and exploring worlds and trying to do good, which was what we had in the last book, even with new characters Ana and Zaveta being entertaining.  So I really can only recommend it for those who loved the last book, and if you haven't started the duology, this book really won't make me suggest both books as something you absolutely have to read.  


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