Leap In The Dark

There was a joke that made the rounds in the late 1970's early 1980's that asked what was the difference between punk and new wave music. Punks, the answer went, wore pins stabbed through their skin, while new wavers wore pins emblazoned with the names of their favourite bands. Not a very good joke perhaps, but it did contain a certain truism regarding the difference between the two genres. For while punk was raw and unbridled energy with more than a hint of danger to it, new wave toned everything down and at its worst excess was more about fashion than anything else.

That's not to say there weren't some great bands from that period, but for every Joy Division, there were four Human Leagues or Heaven 17s playing insipid dance tunes on tinny sounding keyboards. Eventually you couldn't tell them apart from the disco of a decade earlier as the music was completely co-opted by the industry and we ended up with Duran Duran "Howling Like A Wolf" and Wham "Taking Me To The Go Go" or some such shit. Yet in spite of the attempts to squash all the vitality out of music the spark that was first ignited back in the 1970's with punk has never been extinguished.

One only has to listen to KarmaDeva's new release Disgrace to hear what I'm talking about. The Bath England based band's sound has a raw edge to it that hints at anger, which, combined with their sophisticated song writing abilities, distinguishes them from most of the so called alternative rock/independents that you hear today. While so many bands have become obsessed with churning out guitar laden noise that it's become cliched, KarmaDeva has stripped away the fuzz and distortion for a sound that shines like the blade of a sharpened axe.

There's nothing extraneous about KarmaDeva's sound in anyway. Its sharp, strong, and hard - hard in the sense that it's tempered not that they play heavy metal - so you can't ignore it, but that it doesn't bludgeon you to death. Unlike so many bands that think of music as a blunt instrument that they need to beat you over the head with, or that noise is equal to power, these folk understand the strength of restraint and precision. For this recording they have augmented their regular three piece line up; JJ Stannes (vocal, acoustic guitar), Pete Stannes (bass), and Gav Loynes (drums), with electric guitar to give them an additional sharpness, but nothing disguises the fact that their leading edge is the vocals of JJ Stannes.

When a band is as dependant on their vocalist at KarmaDeva is, you have to hope that she is up to the task. For in cases like these there's more required of the singer than just being able to carry a tune and sound nice. That's especially true of this band where their music doesn't leave the vocalist anywhere to hide. Thankfully JJ Stannes is up to the job as she is able to use her voice not only to sing lyrics, but as another instrument adding additional texture to the sound. For not only does she have a strong voice, but she also can exercise great control over it. This isn't only in reference to her ability to control her volume, but also in terms of expression and the fact that she is equally comfortable at any place on the scale that she's required to sing. Her voice sails effortlessly between alto and soprano and back again without once surrendering any of its authority, cracking, or other indications that she's having to force anything,

Right from the disc's opening track, "Feed Your Soul", you become aware of just how effective KarmaDeva's mix of stripped down music and Stannes' vocals are as she not only displays her power, but an ability for subtle shifts in expression and tone as well. For while the song starts out as almost a call to arms with its edict to "Heed the call, and feed your soul/No don't ignore the yearning hunger of your heart.", with her delivery so dispassionate that its almost without feeling, over its course you gradually come to feel the power of the emotion behind the lyrics.

Instead of milking lines in an attempt to manipulate the listener's emotions like so many other vocalist do, Stannes takes the opposite approach by almost being completely neutral in her delivery. Yet at the same time there is an urgency to what she is saying that can't be ignored and we realize that she's not devoid of emotion, merely allowing the words to speak for themselves. In this way she allows her audience to reach their own conclusions and lets them find their own emotional response to what's being said.

While it would be easy to say that the band appears to be morbid with songs that talk about the pain that we can experience as part of being alive, that would be doing them a disservice. For while it's true that songs like "Sentient" contains lyrics like, "Everyone's pain shape-shifted in me once again/Your way takes it's toll, drive me insane", that read like they could be cries of anguish from a tortured soul, that's not the whole picture. Look at the song "Diamond" with the chorus that includes the following: "I believe in my pain/leading me to grace again/I won't ever run away from my pain."

No, its not a song about the joys of masochism, it's about how we can recover from whatever hurts the world has inflicted on us. We can chose to ignore or forget it, even hide from it with drugs and alcohol, but it won't go away and will always exert control over us unless we deal with it. It's only by accepting our pain, believing in its existence, that we are able to overcome it and find our way clear. That might not be the type of message that we are used to receiving from a pop song, but like the band itself, it's a lot more real than most anything else you're going to hear these days.

It's been a long time since I've heard a band play music as clean and strong as KarmaDeva. The fact they couple that with insightful lyrics and powerful singing from their lead vocalist, JJ Stannes, makes them even more compelling. As of now you can only purchase Disgrace, their most recent CD, through download sites like I-Tunes, but you shouldn't let that stop you from checking them out. Hopefully some smart independent label over here will pick them up soon, but until then I suggest listening to them anyway you can - you won't regret it.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 01:28 AM | Permalink

When you are as used to the structure imposed on music by the demands of style and the market place as we are it leaves us woefully unprepared for listening to and appreciating the work of contemporary composers in the field of electronic music. Even those of us familiar with orchestral music or avant-garde jazz are ill prepared for the demands of the genre. For even within the apparent anarchy of the wildest jazz there are still sounds which we can identify. No matter how far afield the music might drift from any rhythmic pattern we recognize, the fact that we can still distinguish the sound of a drum, or other instrument we know, gives us a comfort level that we can build from in order to obtain a level of comprehension when listening to the music.

So when faced with the electronically produced sounds of the modern composition we become close to illiterate as our brains have no understanding of the language being used by the composer. For most of us, the harder we try and understand what a piece might be, the more we frustrate ourselves as we continue to try and impose what we know onto something alien. Like somebody learning to appreciate abstract art after years of only looking at realism and portraiture, we have to forget what we know and try and appreciate the experience on an emotional instead of a intellectual level.

Take for example Turkish composer Erdem Helvacioglu's latest release, Wounded Breath, on Aucourant Records. At first listen the five compositions on the disc might sound to you like little more than a collection of electronic noises that have no meaning. Squeaks, squawks, and Gods know what other sounds issue forth from your speakers following no pattern that you can understand and not forming anything that you would even dream of calling a melody.

The key to listening to this music is to try and get past your preconceived notions of what music is and then to go forward from there. Anyway, you'll soon find that there are recognizable patterns and rhythms in the music, it's just a matter of learning what to listen for. Now I don't mean to make it sound like it's work to listen to Helvacioglu, because although it does require more of a commitment than listening to your average pop tune, that doesn't mean it's hard work. Unfortunately for many of us the act of listening has become a passive activity and we have forgotten how it can also make us active participants in the music being played.

Each of the five pieces on Wounded Breath creates an environment for us to explore through Helvacioglu's manipulation of sounds that he generates by playing an acoustic guitar through a series of processors and programs. The first piece, "Below The Cold Ocean" is an attempt to describe the experiences of a diving crew beneath the ice of the Arctic Ocean. Think about all the different sounds that you could hear; the groan of the ice, the sound of your boat's propellor, the sound of you own breath in your ears, and the sounds of the wind on top of the water. Now think about the conditions; the freezing cold air, the wind that bites, the ice cold water - a cold that no wet or dry suit can really keep out for long. Of course there's also what it's like being beneath sea; the weight of the water bearing down on you the deeper you go beneath the surf, the way the light changes and grows dimmer, and how with each layer beneath the surface you're one layer closer to not being able to return if something should go wrong.

Try and imagine all those impressions being expressed at first individually by the music that Helvacioglu has created, and then they gradually accumulate until all are being played at once. So, if lets say the first sound we hear is the sound of the boat's propellors, that is soon joined by the boat's prow cutting through the waves, then by the sounds of ice and so on until a complete aural sculpture has been formed of what it is like to be beneath the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Listening to this piece we can not help but feel what it is like to be diving beneath the surface of the ocean.

Lest you think there's only seriousness among new music composers, track three of Wounded Breath is a homage to the joys of playing with marbles. "Lead Crystal Marbles" is for any of us who ever spent any time hunched over a dusty sidewalk trying to read the uneven surface in front of us and guide our shooter to click up against an opponent's prized cat's eye. Listen to the clink of the marbles as they bounce off various surfaces; the glass of another marble, the cement of the aforementioned sidewalk, or the tarmac of the school yard where quick games were assembled over fifteen minute recesses in the morning and afternoon.

What other piece of music could evoke all those sense memories? None that I've listened to or heard before, but that's exactly what Erdem Helvacioglu is able to do with his music. Somehow these strange collections of sounds are able to summon up from the depths of our memories sensations that we have long forgotten, or maybe never even knew we felt. Sure there are familiar sounds for us among the marble players, but what about track two "Dance Of Fire"? What does it touch in us so that we experience, or are able to understand the experience of dancing flames?

It would almost seem like Helvacioglu's composition is able to reach into race memories that date back to man's earliest beginnings when fire meant the difference between life and death. Somehow he captures how emotionally important fire, and the light and heat it represents, has been to humans since whenever. The repeller of the dark, the revealer of the unseen, the dispeller of shadows, and the bringer of life saving warmth; fire has always been our first symbol of safety and security. Of course it can also burn the hand that feeds it, so care must be taken not to provoke it so that it dances beyond the confines of its nest lest it consume us. Our first lessons in power came from fire, how a careful stoking that accumulated energy was of far more use than a rapid expansion of power that burnt brightly but only for a short time and then was gone.

Listening to "Dance Of Fire" you can hear any of what I described above or none of it, and the same goes for any of the five pieces on Wounded Breath. It's all there waiting to be heard but you have to want to listen. This is not music for people who want to be spoon fed and told what they should feel and how they should respond; you have to be prepared to react to what you hear. However the rewards for that little effort are incredible as you'll be introduced music that will open you up to new experiences and allow you to explore worlds previously closed to you.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:11 AM | Permalink

I wonder if any of us can imagine the straits somebody would have to be in to stow away in the cargo hold of a ship in the desperate hopes that whatever awaits at the end of that journey is better than what they have all ready experienced? What would it take for you to flee with nothing but the clothes on your back? I would think that anybody who went to those lengths must seriously believe their lives to be in danger or have cause to fear for their personal safety.

Yet the usual reaction in the so called developed world to people that desperate is to lock them up in detention centres while some government bureaucrat tries to decide whether or not they deserve to be granted refugee status and given asylum in whatever country they've ended up in. If the person can offer no proof that deportation will put their lives in jeopardy, as if they had time to get affidavits from the gunmen who came into their village and shot everybody or a copy of the arrest warrant that resulted in their being tortured, the only hope they have is if the country they've landed in has identified their country of origin as one where its civilian population is at risk.

Unfortunately if you're from a country like Nigeria in Africa which is now in the top ten of the world petroleum producers, most of the industrialized world has a vested interest in the activities that have put your life at risk. This is the case that the title character of Chris Cleave's most recent release, Little Bee, available from Random House Canada February10th/09, finds herself in. When deposits of crude oil are discovered under her village in Southern Nigeria, the oil company sends in soldiers to kill everybody and burn the village down. Since the government is aware of this activity - whole villages can't just disappear without somebody noticing after all, any survivors who escape become subject to immediate arrest and disappear usually never to be seen again. (Check out the author's web site for more information on Nigeria)

Little Bee is the story of two women, Little Bee a Nigerian seeking asylum in Great Britain, and Sarah O'Rourke (nee Summers) a successful British journalist seeking refuge from the life she has created for herself personally and professionally. It's been two years since Little Bee landed in England as a stowaway onboard a ship from Nigeria and she has spent nearly every day since in the Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre while her fate is decided. As the book opens it appears that a decision has been reached as she is being released. She and three other women have each been given chits good for a taxi and are free to go - that they might not have anywhere to go, or that they have no papers documenting their status as refugees, appears to have escaped everybody's notice.

It turns out that the release is not as official as Little Bee hoped. One of the three other women traded sex for illegal release, and it looks better for three or four to be released instead of just one. So Bee and two others find themselves standing in line waiting to use a phone thinking they have been granted asylum, when in actual fact they have just been turned into illegal immigrants.

At least Little Bee does have someone to call aside from a cab. One of her few treasured possessions is the driver's licence of one Andrew O'Rourke, journalist and husband of Sarah, both of whom she had had a chance meeting with on a beach in Nigeria slightly over two years ago. That Little Bee was with her sister at the time and fleeing the men hired by the oil company to destroy their village and kill its inhabitants at the time meant their initial meeting was not your typical interaction between tourist and local.

Sarah and Andrew were on the vacation in the hopes of saving their marriage as Sarah had been having, and would continue to have, an affair. They had separated briefly upon Andrew's discovery of Sarah's infidelity, but had decided to try to rebuild if for no other reason than their child Charlie. However by the time Little Bee phones them from the Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre, their marriage is as precarious as it ever was. For not only had their attempt at a second honeymoon failed to save their marriage, the events surrounding their meeting with Little Bee while in Nigeria had changed them both irrevocably.

In Little Bee Cleave has managed the very difficult task of writing about an issue that he obviously feels very passionate about without ever becoming polemic at the expense of his story. He had done a masterful job of creating two very believable lead characters in Sarah and Little Bee, and an equally brilliant job of alternating the narrative between them. By sometimes having the two women describe the same situation he is able to show us the ways in which they differ and are the same without having to spell anything out.

What I particularly appreciated is how Cleave built the story so that he weaves the past and the present together as he gradually develops the history that existed before Little Bee came to England. When Little Bee shows up unexpectedly on Sarah's doorstep near the beginning of the book it not only triggers Sarah to remember the events that led up to the trip to Nigeria, but what happened when she and Little Bee first met. While at first her decision to try and help Little Bee might seem like the knee jerk reaction of a guilty, affluent, white liberal, as she reflects on her life we realize there is more to her than that. At some point in her life she had become lost and Little Bee is the catalyst that helps her find her way back to being the person who wanted to make a difference.

While some of Little Bee's narration is what you'd expect, stranger in a strange land sort of thing, it never feels cliched or inappropriate for her character. After all she is a sixteen year old girl from a small village in Africa who had never been in a city before let alone out of her own country. Yet at the same time Cleave doesn't let her become a sweet little refugee girl who we all should feel sorry for. She wants vengeance on the people who are responsible for killing her sister, and, in a way, she gets to see it carried out even though its not in a manner any of us would have expected.

It's the unexpected things that Cleave brings to his characterization of both Sarah and Little Bee that make this book so real, for neither of them fit into anyone's easy stereotype of white liberal guilt or the plucky refugee whose an example for us all. Intelligent, well written, and with believable characters, Little Bee offers readers the chance to try and understand what would drive a person to climb into that cargo hold and search for a place to start their life over again. While the characters and the institutions mentioned in the book are all fictional, the description of conditions in both British detention centres and in Southern Nigeria are accurate and based on factual evidence. You might never think of asylum seekers in the same way again after reading this book.

Little Bee can be purchased directly from Random House Canada or an on line retailer like Amazon.ca as of February10th/09.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 04:25 AM | Permalink

Cultural anthropologists and music historians have been making what are known as field recordings ever since Thomas Edison invented his wax cylinders more then a hundred years ago. A field recording is pretty much what its name implies, any recording that's made out "in the field", or in other words, the home location of the people who make the music. A majority of the time these recordings are done not with public consumption in mind, but as a means of obtaining samples for future study and analysis or of simply having a record that will preserve a sound for posterity.

However there are also those who make field recordings for the simple love of the music and hearing it played in the way its been played for generation after generation. The sound quality of these recordings are obviously going to be inferior to anything that's been recorded in the studio, but the compensation lies in the immediacy of the performance and the connection between the performer and the music. In his introduction to the book that accompanies his Art Of Field Recording Volume ll on the Dust To Digital label, Art Rosenbaum talks about how the context of memory, history, and associations each performer has connecting them to the songs he recorded them singing makes them makes them resonate with an audience.

Art should know what he's talking about for the subtitle of the collection is "Fifty Years Of Traditional American Music Documented By Art Rosenbaum". With recording equipment in hand Art has travelled across America for the last fifty years listening and recording music on back porches, living rooms, churches, and anywhere else that people gather to play, listen to, or dance to the music that their parents and grand parents taught them. The four CDs of music that make up "Volume ll"; "Survey", "Religious", "Accompanied Songs And Ballads", and "Unaccompanied Songs And Ballads", not only show the amazing diversity of music that has been and is being sung across America, it demonstrates that personal connection between performer and music on every track.

There's so much wonderful music in this collection that it's hard to know where to start when talking about it. "Survey", the first disc, contains twenty-nine songs from all across America representing everything from French Canadian fiddle tunes found in New Hampshire, Fidel Martin playing "La Grondeuse" (The Scolding Woman) that was recorded back in 1967, to Tony Bryant playing "Broke Down Engine", an example of Georgia blues that was recorded forty years later in 2007.

This first disc can make your head spin a little because one second you might be listening to the Cajun sounds of The Balfa Brothers and Nathan Abshire from Luisiana, and the next your listening to a teenaged Kirk Brandenberger recorded in the 1970's playing amazing fiddle tunes and sounding wise beyond his years when he talks about how he's not so sure whether he likes the fiddle competitions that he keeps on winning because of the hurt feelings of those who lose. (I hadn't read the background information on this track until after I heard it, and I thought Kirk was a much older man when I heard him talking and playing. Not only did his voice sound like that of someone who'd lived for a while, his playing did as well)

While the second ("Religious"), third ("Accompanied Songs And Ballads"), and the fourth discs ("Unaccompanied Songs And Ballads") each contain songs of a similar type, that doesn't stop them from being any less diverse than disc one. I have to admit that I've always preferred African American gospel music to old time country religious music save a few exceptions. However after listening to disc two of this collection I realize that was only because I'd rarely had the opportunity to hear the latter played by people with conviction. Listening to The Myers Family and Friends singing their version of Hazel Houser's "The River Jordon", originally written for the Louvin Brothers, you know these people feel what they are singing about as it sounds like each word is drawn out of their hearts.

Of course there are plenty of examples of the African American style of gospel music we're most familiar with, my favourite on the disc being "Lets Have A Family Prayer" performed by The Travelling Inner Lights, but there's also some examples of older styles of African American gospel. "A Charge To Keep I Have" by Rev. Willie Mae Eberhart, Sister Fleeta Mitchell and Eddie Ruth Pringle is done in the old style called "lining" where one person intones the words of a line and then the congregation repeats the line in song. This style of music also contains the unique feature of the congregation moaning the last line of the piece, which according to Rev. Eberhart allows an individual to feel the music deeper in their spirit. As listening to these three women sing that final line gave me chills I'd have to agree with her.

The last two discs contain music that probably more of us are familiar with, standards such as "Barbara Allan", "John Henry", ' John Hardy", and "On Top Of Old Smokey" to name only a few. But until you hear someone like Mose Parker sing "John Henry", growling out the lyrics and strumming and beating on his guitar like it was old John Henry's hammer, I don't think you can say you've actually experienced the song. I don't know any other way of describing what it was like to hear him sing it except to say that if he didn't live through that experience he knew somebody who did.

It's easy to forget just how potent a single unaccompanied voice can be until you hear somebody like Mary Lomax on the final disc of this set. By no one's definition does she have a refined voice, or even one that's easy on the ear, but it's easily the realist voice you'll ever hear. Listen to her version of "Fair And Tender Maidens" and you'll understand more about a woman's broken heart than any poet could tell you and hear more real emotion than if you combined all the modern pop divas together.

Art Rosenbaum is not only a music collector he's also a gifted painter, (the painting above is one of his) and each CD cover as well as the box set's cover is graced by one of his works depicting people playing the music that he loves so much. For Art Of Field Recording Volume ll is nothing if not a labour of love. Why else would you wander the backwoods roads and into villages in the hopes that you'll find someone who not only plays music but will let you barge into their living room with no introduction and record them? Reading the accompanying ninty-six page book, full of photographs and illustrations by the author and his wife and blurbs on each song and the people performing it, and Rosenbaum's descriptions of how this music is unique because of the love that each performer has for their music, you can hear his love for them and the music shine through.

Art Of Field Recording Volume ll is an amazing collection of music and people that can't help but make you feel better about the world. There are fewer and fewer people today who play music because of what the song means to them in terms of their family's history or the people who taught it to them. To have the opportunity to experience listening to that type of music is a rare treat and one that might not be available to us for that much longer. Thanks to people like Art Rosenbaum though we will at least have records like this one to help us remember just how good that music was.

Posted by Richard Marcus at 05:10 AM | Permalink

In The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters Volume ONe Gordon Dahlquist created a fantastical version of 19th century Europe which he populated with an intriguing cast of heroes and villains. On one side a mysterious cabal of individuals made up of captains of industry, government insiders, high ranking military officers, and the aristocracy of various nations and their diabolical plans for obtaining power. Seeking to thwart their plots an unlikely a trio as you'll ever see; Celeste Temple, a single woman of good breeding and some money, Mr. Chang, also known as The Cardinal (a disfiguring scar from the whip of a young noble that gave his eyes an Asiatic cast and his preferred garb of a long red coat are the genesis of his names), a killer for hire, and Dr. Abelard Svenson, an army doctor attached to the diplomatic mission of the Duchy of Macklenburg, a German principality.

While Volume One explained how each of our heroes became embroiled with the intrigue and gave us a good idea as to what their foes were attempting to do and how they were going about it, The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters Volume Two, being published by Random House Canada on February 3rd/09, reveals the extent of the cabals plans, and goes into even more explicit detail as to how they aim to fulfill them. Although we had previously learned something of the mysterious alchemy that allows a person's experiences to be recorded in blue glass and that an individual looking into that glass becomes immersed in the emotions recorded, it becomes clear that is only the tip of the ice berg.

After a brief period of working together to discover more information about the cabal the three again split up to pursue separate investigations. Although their parting helps each discover more details of the plot they are up against, it was not the result of considered planning. Instead it was an indication of the emotional fragility that marks each of the three characters. One of the things that Dahlquist has recreated accurately about this era is the state of emotional repression that most people existed in. What's more he also manages to capture the effect that an emotional upheaval has upon people who are normally alienated from their feelings perfectly.

For when Celeste succumbs to her feelings about finding her ex-fiancee among the cabal, and falls to pieces in front of The Cardinal and Dr. Svenson, she is mortified with thoughts that they might think her weak. Blind to anything else, including reason, she decides that in order to prove herself she must carry out a dangerous adventure on her own. So she slips away to confront the leaders of the cabal. Not having any idea where she might have gone, The Cardinal and Dr. Svenson are forced to separate in the hopes of finding her, with the result that they all end up in deadly peril.

While there have plenty of fantasy and science fiction books that deal with mind control or psychological manipulation of one kind or another, Dahlquist's books are some of the first that I've read that deal with the power of emotions in the same way. Politicians today are past masters of manipulating our emotions at the expense of reason by playing on our fears in order to convince us they are the ones who will keep us safe. What Dahlquist does is take that basic premise and magnify to a degree that is horrifying.

His decision to set the series in a fictional 19th century setting and retain the moral codes of the time have given him the ideal societal conditions to explore the effects of unbridled emotions. In a society where propriety is the foremost consideration and sexuality is sublimated, experiencing sensual pleasure would be like taking a drug. Using their method of recording people's experiences, the cabal feeds its targets undiluted doses of the most stimulating and rawest emotions they can accumulate in order to seduce them to their aims. However the process not only encodes emotions, but all of a person's experiences and thoughts as well. So anybody going through the process allows the cabal access to any knowledge they have stored in their memory.

Imagine if you have lived your life in a state of near frigidity, and all of a sudden someone promises you that they can not only free you to experience waves of pleasure without any guilt or shame, but also help you achieve any ambitions you might have for power, wealth, or status. Simply undergo "the process" and you will ascend to a higher level of being. If you were an ambitious politician or a greedy industrialist in the 19th century would you be able to resist? It may not sound plausible to our ears put so baldly, but Dahlquist makes it all ring true.

For even our three heroes become ensnared by the strength of the emotions that emanate from the pieces of blue glass which contain a specific moment and the deadlier glass books which are the record of person's entire experiences. Even the ways they are able to overcome the effects of the glass are such that it adds to the verisimilitude of the circumstances. For it's not because they have any superhuman powers or are "better" people than those who surrender, it's because they know that the people behind the scenes don't have their best interests at heart. Remembering you're in deadly peril usually helps prevent you being seduced by your enemy.

The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters Volume Two like its predecessor is not only an exciting and alluring adventure, its a terrifying look at the potential to control people through emotions. What was impressive about the first book, an intriguing plot and interesting characters, is improved upon here as Dahlquist not only manages to spin new webs of intrigue in this volume he also unravels them with eloquence. Meanwhile he also allows his three lead characters to learn and grow from both their experiences and their acquaintance with each other and show how it is possible to free your emotions without the aid of alchemeny.

It's not often that a book can be escapist fun and thought provoking at the same time, but that is definitely the case in this instance. I'm looking forward eagerly to the release of the final volume in this series for what promises to be more of the same.

The Glass Books Of The Dream Eaters Volume Two can be purchased directly from Random House Canada as of February 3rd/09 or through an on line retailer like Amazon.ca

Posted by Richard Marcus at 03:22 AM | Permalink