A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes by N.Z. Kaminsky; Beautiful Ethereal Bildungsroman About Lucid Dreaming, Creativity, and Imagination

 A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes by N.Z. Kaminsky; Beautiful Ethereal Bildungsroman About Lucid Dreaming, Creativity, and Imagination 

By Julie Sara Porter 

Bookworm Reviews 

This review is also on Reedsy Discovery 

Spoilers: N.Z. Kaminksy’s novel A Sense of Home: The Land of The Great Lakes lives up to its name. Once you open this beautiful lyrical book and fall into this bildungsroman of a young girl experiencing an ethereal evocative world of lucid dreams, creativity, and imagination you will feel like you are coming home. 

Tyra Blair lived in the city of Moss in the parallel world of Azure. It is much like our Earth with similar history, pop culture, and problems. One of those problems is war. When soldiers and their trained beasts attack Moss, Tyra and her family are forced go into hiding in the town of Marigold which is beautiful but the people there are cold and unpleasant. In exile, Tyra's parents implode as her mother Scarlett becomes depressed and her father Logan retreats into alcohol. Tyra is forced to become self-reliant while dealing with trauma, nightmares, and aching loneliness. She can only find comfort in books and nature. 

One day, she meets Koda a friendly squirrel. He guides her to a mirror where she can visit her favorite books and stories. This experience opens up a brighter lucid dream world. Her lucid dreams appear throughout her life as she grows and deals with many personal issues of loss, fighting parents, unemployment, unsatisfying romances, separation, war, tyranny, and death. These lucid dreams help her survive and dream of the day when she will leave to join The Land of The Great Lakes. Not Minnesota, it is a fabled land of thought, imagination, and beauty that can only be reached by invitation.

This book is one that grabs Readers's attention and holds on causing them to remember the little details long after they are done, particularly Tyra's lucid dreams. They are definitely the highlights of this book. 

Tyra and Koda’s trips into books delight any bookworm. The duo see Lady Death tries to con her godson doctor into letting her kill his patient. A man is confronted by and consumed by his shadow self. Grandfather Frost warms an abandoned maiden and many more. Through these experiences, Tyra is immersed into worlds of imagination, courage, adventure, and escape. The characters aren't content to wallow in loss and self pity like her parents. Instead, they persevere and fight with strength, cleverness, and kindness. In doing so, they challenge the status quo and reshape the world. Through them, Tyra is inspired to find ways to reshape hers. 

The book journeys aren't the only situations that Tyra's lucid dreams conjure up. She is able to befriend fantastic creatures like a pair of adorable furry monsters who would not be out of place in a Muppet special. She communicates with the deceased who send her wisdom that they were unable to when they were alive. They offer guidance on her path through signs, riddles, and visions. Her dreams not only provide an escape from a troublesome existence but gives her the means to survive it and aspire towards a greater path.

The best book to compare A Sense of Home to is another one that I recently read, The Art of Agony by Amy Felix. They are both coming of age stories about young women exploring the inner depths of their minds to survive during dismal dark times but the executions are polar opposites. 

The Art of Agony is about Eva, the protagonist becoming aware that the world is a dark meaningless place, even her own mind can't be trusted, and no one cares about how she feels. In A Sense of Home, Tyra's mind is opened to more enlightened possibilities. She sees a world beyond the one in which she lives that gives her a sense of purpose and more meaningful existence.

 While The Art of Agony is a more cerebral introspective perspective, A Sense of Home is a fuller, more evocative, ethereal, and a more intelligent perspective. It is one thing to come to the realization that life is hard and everything is stacked against you, but it is another to admit that but to find some meaning, purpose, and value in it anyway. That's why in some ways A Sense of Home is more mature than The Art of Agony which while excellent in exploring angst and the source of it, can also be lost in, overwhelmed by, and consumed by that same angst. Why bother doing anything at all if nothing matters? Why bother writing about it?

 A Sense of Home tells us that what we dream about, long for, hope for, create, inspire, love, and bring to life is enough of a reason. If we are only a spark in this vastness in the universe, then we might as well find something that isn't harmful but worthwhile. Something that gives us contentment and some kind of pleasure about being alive.

Weekly Reader: Flint of Dreams by Charles Peterson Sheppard; Involved Thriller and Dark Fantasy About Harnessing One's Own Power

 

Weekly Reader: Flint of Dreams by Charles Peterson Sheppard; Involved Thriller and Dark Fantasy About Harnessing One's Own Power

By Julie Sara Porter

Bookworm Reviews

Spoilers: Lucid dreaming is the ability to control one's dreams by knowing that the sleeper is dreaming. Remote viewing is seeking impressions about distant or unseen subjects with the mind. 

These are powers that are investigated in Flint of Dreams, Charles Peterson Sheppard's deeply thought and tightly woven thriller and dark fantasy about a young man who is the subject of intense scrutiny because he possesses these abilities.

Asa "Flint" Spencer, the young man with said abilities, is a Seneca Iroquois who spent a lot of time in trouble with the law. He was once part of a gang of car thieves and now is trying to live a somewhat decent law abiding life with friends and a white girlfriend whose bigoted mother does not approve of him. Unfortunately, his felonious past isn't as far behind him as he was hoping. Crystine Nagata, a college student, is raped and her assailants are dead. The police arrest Flint for the crimes. Meanwhile, a local counselor and government agents are interested in Flint's abilities and there is also a gangster who has some unique powers of his own and harbors no qualms about using them to his advantage.

Flint of Dreams puts a fantastic situation in a realistic setting and shows how people react when they are faced with it, reflecting the way many would behave in real life. Some want to study it. Others want to profit off of it and use it to their advantage. Others would fear it and think that it brings evil. Those who have it may embrace it as a sign that they are meant to do great things while others want to run from it because it gets in the way of living a normal life. 

Flint is the type who would rather run. Many of his lucid dreams involve himself in the woods or near a lake with some mysterious characters, including a beautiful seemingly ageless woman and plenty of waterfowl. He gets images of things that happen even when he isn't there to witness it. He rejects most of these abilities partly because he wants to live a normal life, but also because they remind him of his tribe and the old ways. The dreams and visions are a part of his life but they are tucked away in his mind as he deals with the reality of being a young impoverished indigenous man with very few prospects.

Flint is not always the most likable protagonist but it is easy to understand where he is coming from. His father is gone and his mother is an alcoholic who couldn't care less about her son. His education and employment history is spotty. Even when he tries for legitimacy there are always bullies who challenge him to fights or remember him from the bad old days, racists,like his girlfriend Denise Nash's mother, who see his skin color and ancestry and don't want to give him a chance, and cops who arrest him because of his history regardless of whether he did the crimes or not. 

With that many decks stacked against him, it's understandable that he would want to go through life fighting and breaking the law.

 If no one believes in a person when they are ordinary, why should he do anything for them when he has something extra that could help them? Why should that person believe in themselves? The moments when Flint actually does investigate his abilities and uses them to help others are that much greater because of how much stands in his path. 

It also helps that Flint has some understanding friends and allies that want to help. With the exception of the racist snobby Mrs. Nash, the rest of the Nash family is close to Flint. Denise is a supportive girlfriend even if she doesn't always specifically understand what Flint is going through. Her brother, Chance, is one of Flint's best friends but isn't afraid to call him out on his behavior when his self-pity and bad attitude get too much. 

Denise and Chase's father, Van Nash, a psychiatric counselor, is the first to notice Flint's abilities and make some attention known about how astronomical they are. While most of the police officers and government agents are standard characters there is one that stands out, a woman with the great name of Jill St. Jillian. Once she follows Flint's case and understands his powers and what he's going through, St. Jillian is empathetic enough to give him shelter when others are looking for him.

There are a couple of other characters who are tangentially related to Flint's story but still are brilliant characters in their own right. One is Cristina Nagata, the aforementioned rape victim. She is the daughter of a former Yakuza member who, similar to Flint, is putting a felonious past behind her while studying glow worms and fireflies. She is also in a relationship with Keith Habalo, a chemical assistant for a pharmaceutical company that is creating a pill to give the users certain abilities like lucid dreaming, remote viewing, and enhanced ESP.

Another fascinating character is Brizio "Essy Breezy" Pachachi, a foil and in some ways a shadow self of Flint's. Like Flint he too has extrasensory perception, usually involving telepathy. Like Flint, he had a terrible childhood with a mother who gave birth to and then abandoned him in a gas station restroom. Afterwards, he was fostered by two parents who used his powers in their street performance act. Breezy grew up abused and exploited, and fully aware of the gift that he has so unlike Flint who locks it away, he used it. He used it in his criminal career and for his own gain becoming more powerful and terrifying than the average gangster. After all, it's hard to arrest or shoot someone who can read your thoughts. He is the worst case scenario of someone that Flint could be if he doesn't keep his powers and ego in check.

Some of the later chapters get kind of convoluted and the book meanders a bit by running too long, but still Flint of Dreams is a brilliant book about the cost of having and living with abilities that makes a person different from anyone else.