THE GLASS BOOKS OF THE DREAM EATERS
Viking/Paperback/760 pages/$30.50 before GST at major bookstores.

AT 760 pages, The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters is just 24 pages thinner than the upcoming Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows.

And with its epic scope and decidedly English air, despite the fact that it is set in a nameless country, this tome seems at first blush to promise a fantasy-adventure just as riveting.

In a darker version of the predicaments that face Jane Austen's heroines, the protagonist Miss Temple (we later learn her first name is Celeste, but only a few intimates are allowed to address her as such) is served with a severed engagement at the start of the book.

A young heiress from the West Indies used to having her way, she ignores her former beau's instructions to disappear from his life and sets off to discover the reasons for his change of heart.

She ends up following him on a train bound for a mansion deep in the country,where a strange gathering involving masks, operating theatres and scantily-clad girls is taking place.

Also at the gathering, and introduced in successive chapters, are the two men who become her allies - a mercenary called Cardinal Chang, who is neither Catholic nor Chinese, and Dr Svenson, the personal physician to a minor prince.

The trio eventually find themselves pitted against a nefarious cabal which isusing a curious substance called indigo clay to produce a special kind of glassinto which a person???s memories can be recorded, and subsequently shared withother people in an experience that is more real than life.

Though this steampunk storage device usually takes the form of a book,individual memories might find their way into thumbdrive-sized cards.

Why this is evil is because the cabal plans to use the glass to control varioushighly placed people, eventually achieving the obligatory villainous desire ofworld domination.

As our intrepid heroes and heroine unite to subvert these evil intentions, theyencounter along the way women who have been turned into the glass as well asall manner of secret passageways, trick mirrors, saucy damsels, analogmachinery and scheming European royalty.

These characters, with names like d???Orkancz, Vandaariff, Karl-Horst and Xonck,at first seem to brim with charming eccentricity, but end up just breezing by aflurry of dastardly deeds.

Indeed, if you???re wondering why the book is so thick, it???s because there???s justso much action going on: spying sessions, train rides, showdowns andmasquerades, though with each narrow escape by the threesome the plot gets moreand more absurd and the supporting cast more and more unremarkable.

If you get past the overblown plot though, you???ll discover that Dahlquistwrites with a wit worthy of Oscar Wilde. As Miss Temple proclaims at anadversary at one point: "This is nonsense! First you say I am a murderer... andnow I am a deluded heartsick girl. Pray make up your mind so I can scoff at youwith precision!"

And if you plough even deeper, you might discover that the book raisesphilosophical issues that are pertinent today. Through one of the cards, theas-yet-intact Miss Temple gets to experience, rather vividly, another woman???ssexual encounter, in an obvious allusion to the potential of virtual reality.

Allegory of modern life or no, this book is a lush, intricately sculpted worldthat tests the limits of both writer and reader. Pity, then, that theexperience it provides is somewhat less absorbing than those of the glass booksof its title.