4.5 Stars

”We all end in the ocean
We all start in the streams
We're all carried along
By the river of dreams
“In the middle of the night”
-- The River of Dreams, Billy Joel, Songwriters: Billy Joel

“Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream.”
—A Dream Within A Dream, Edgar Allan Poe


It begins at the college.

A girl named Kara. A party. She leaves, not feeling well, thinking she is coming down with something, she is so very, very tired. She makes it back to her dorm room, and falls asleep in her clothes, her boots still on, so that when her roommate wakes up the next morning she finds her sound asleep. Not wanting to disturb her, Mei dresses quietly and leaves the room as soundlessly as possible.

When Mei returns nine hours later, Kara is still asleep in bed, and Mei calls her name, again and again, but Kara does not respond. Not to Mei. Not to the paramedics who come. She’s oblivious to the sounds around her, the sounds of her six-week-new friends calling out to her as she is wheeled away on a stretcher. The sirens. The bumps along the road. The doctors trying to wake her.

She sleeps through it all.

This sickness moves through the dorm, and then spreads beyond the campus - slowly at first, insidiously. From an elderly man to the young, people begin to fall victim to this unnatural sleep, the hospital begins to fill up with people, alive but sleeping, dreaming unusually vivid dreams, the kind that would feel all too real – if only they would awaken.

I wanted to read this as I had read Karen Thompson Walker’s The Age of Miracles, her debut novel which was set in a dystopian near future. This is more science fiction mixed with fairy tale / fantasy fiction, perhaps, than dystopian, as these people succumb to sleep in a way that reminded me of watching Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion (and Toto, too) on their way to Oz and suddenly, one by one, all but the Tin Man succumb to the overwhelming need to sleep.

Walker dips into the theories of Freud, Jung and others now and then in the ponderings and theories of the unfamiliar, unnatural dream state these people have entered into, which is shown by their unusual brain activity. At the same time she brings us into this world, the tenuous nature of this delicate, almost ethereal place these people find themselves in, the sleeping and those who are surrounded by the confines created by those sleeping.

How this virus is spread, the response of those who are supposed to help and protect, the question of an allegiance to those we know and love vs. strangers, the fragility of life, these are among the provocative ideas and questions that are posed in this novel.

Beautifully creative and subtly unsettling story of a community faced with a devastating threat, shared through gorgeous prose, and a story that keeps you turning pages through some unexpected twists, all the while loving every minute.


Pub Date: 15 JAN 2019

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Random House Publishing Group – Random House

In the college town of Santa Lora, California, a virus suddenly spreads, causing those who catch it to descend into a deep, coma-like sleep from which it appears they may never wake.

The Dreamers follows several different people from Santa Lora, an omniscient narrator flowing dream-like from one to the next with gripping present tense prose. There’s Rebecca, the college student who sleeps with a baby growing inside her; Anna and Ben, a married couple with a newborn child; Libby and Sara, whose doomsday-prepper father succumbs to the virus, leaving them alone.

As the virus spreads, the town becomes quarantined. Doctors and scientists are brought in to try to answer important questions: what causes it? How does it spread? What will become of the victims?

This is a fast, engaging read with a post-apocalyptic vibe—but ultimately I wanted more from it. There are a lot of interesting ideas that are only ever half-formed, particularly about the nature of dreams, reality and time. There’s a convergence of the scientific, the philosophical, and the psychological, but it’s only ever briefly touched upon; never explored with the depth I hoped for.

The result is a novel that never transcends its surface layers, though to its credit, those surface layers are at least intriguing.

THE DREAMERS is about a college town that is suddenly overcome with an epidemic of sleeping sickness. People left and right begin falling asleep, unable to be woken up - and while they sleep, they have some wild dreams.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this, but I ended up really enjoying it! The paranoia and fear felt by the townsfolk was palpable, and the focus given to various members of the community creates an amazing panoramic view of the little town of Santa Lora, California.

I'll definitely be looking out for other things by this author!

A thrilling story that sucked me right in! Despite focusing on many different characters over such a short novel, Walker still managed to make each character—their hopes, their fears, their desires—simply fascinating. The characters drew me in almost as much as the plot itself, which focused on an entire town that is quarantined due to a sleeping sickness.

Karen Thompson Walker's latest, The Dreamers, was such an interesting read. I love Walker's writing style of letting the reader figure some things out on their own by not always being blatant in her writing - like how she you can see that the dreams may be peeks into other realms, but you're never quite sure. It allows the reader some creativity in interpretation. I loved it.

This book sucked me right in...I was intrigued and couldn't stop reading. I was able to finish in two sittings, which does not happen often. This is a bit sci-fi, but also extremely realistic and could happen at any time. A sickness takes over a small California college town and spreads rapidly. Its victims fall into a deep sleep full of dreams. Everyone is scared; no one knows how it spreads and who will drop at any minute. The hospital is quarantined, the campus turned to a medical facility, and volunteers are flown in to help care for the ill; definitely a doomsday feel to this one.
I couldn't put it down and will happily recommend to anyone who listens.

It starts in a college dorm- a girl goes to sleep, but doesn’t wake up. Soon, others in the dorm follow her. Then it begins to spread throughout the town. First those affected are isolated and quarantined, but soon the government blocks off the whole town. The cause is obviously a virus, but how does it spread? How can it be stopped? Will the dreamers ever awaken?

This book has a good plot, but the problem for me came in the dreams had by those sleeping. They hinted at another dimension, or of prescience, but we never really found out. All in all, it was still a good read, and I would recommend it. Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC.

I loved this book, just as I loved The Age of Miracles and Station Eleven. The author's ability to world build and conjure characters is unparalleled. We will be recommending this title in our high school for grades 11 and up and I think it can have wide appeal!

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I loved, loved, loved The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker. It centers around a town, Santa Lora, where a mysterious illness takes hold. It makes people fall asleep, unable to wake up. They appear to be dreaming, but it’s not clear whether they’ll ever wake up again. It centers on several different people during the outbreak and the aftermath, including a couple college students, a couple and their newborn, two young girls, and an older man.

It drew me in with the mystery, but I found myself less interested in the “why” of the virus and more in the “how” of survival. How could the characters prevent getting it? How do you treat them? This worked out well for me because the book wasn’t interested in the “why” either.

This book was so engaging and the writing was marvelous. I’ve never read Karen Thompson Walker’s work before, but I’m a big fan now.

4.5/5 stars

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a complimentary copy of The Dreamers. I really enjoyed this book and found myself thinking about it during the day when I wasn’t able to sit down with it. I don’t know what this says about me, but I kept forgetting that the disease/condition in the story was from a book and not real life. For example, a coworker complained of certain symptoms, and my gut response was, “Oh no! It’s spreading here!” The author did a great job of jumping to and from each characters’ stories, but not too much so, and enough time was spent on each for me to feel invested in them. This is the first book I’ve read by this author; I look forward to going back to read her debut novel and am eager to read her new releases in the future.

I was excited to get my hands on an advanced copy of "The Dreamers" by Karen Thompson Walker because of the comparisons to Emily St. John Mandel's "Station Eleven". While both titles center around an outbreak of sickness, that's where the similarities end. I did enjoy "The Dreamers" and it kept my interest until the end but I'm not so sure this one will stay with me a long time like "Station Eleven" has. As I flew through the pages, I found myself more engrossed in the story itself rather than feeling much attachment to any of the particular characters which felt strange to be so detached about characters dealing with sickness, fear, and loss. I did find it to be an enjoyable well-told story just not life changing for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Random House for this advanced readers copy.

Hmm... it started off good, got slow, got weird, ended weird so how many stars to give? 3 would be about right.

The sleeping sickness starts at a college dorm and then spreads to the town, but it takes the longest time to figure out how it spreads and how to prevent it from spreading. The stories of the people affected are enough to get you involved in the desire to know what is going on, but then it got slow, descriptive pages that really didn't add anything to the story and tended to make me skim them.

For some, they awake with memories of strange dreams that may be the past or the present or just dreams; it's hard for them to tell which. At the end of reading it, I am left with wondering about a lot of things so as time passes, maybe I will have more answers, but right now? Not a book I'd rush to tell others about or urge them to read.

Thank you NetGalley for the advance reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I couldn’t wait for Walker’s new book, since I loved The Age of Miracle so much, and The Dreamers was worth the wait.

With lyrical, beautiful prose Walker shows us a mysterious virus, which is silent, sudden and it leaves its mark even on those who survive it. Though we have more than one main character (an old professor who lost his love to Alzheimer, a young couple who tries to renew their shaky relationship and deal with their new born baby, a shy girl who falls in love with a wild and eccentric guy, a little girl whose father fears secret government conspiracies, a psychiatrist who is summoned to study the victims and a college girl from conservative religious family, who accidentally gets pregnant), so we don’t get that personal tone like in Age of Miracles, but I could still relate to all of their stories, because they had a common theme: love and loss.

As the virus and the panic spreads, the atmosphere gets more and more claustrophobic, and this meshed well with the multiple POVs, showing how the desperation and the fear of the unknown creeps into the life of the average family, how life narrows down only to surviving until the next moment in a time of disaster.
The bittersweet tone of the story also comes from that we not only see loss from grieving someone but a different one too: the victims of the virus have strange dreams, someone takes their own life due to this, someone is haunted by it for their whole life that they lost something. It’s not clear cut what the virus does to people, what the victims dream of, but it begs the question: what are memories? What makes them real? Is something any more real if it happened to us but we don’t remember it or if we remember something that didn’t happen (be it a false memory or these strange dreams)?

We might not get a real answer of what the virus really does, but it still makes the whole book depressing and mysterious, like a dream or a life not lived, a possibility we regret we didn’t take.

A quote from the book summarizes up the story very well: “a love for the end of the world.” It really felt like an apocalyptic love story, a love with Life itself.

The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker was mesmerizing. This is the second of the author's books that I have read (the first being The Age of Miracles), and she has a gift for creating captivating stories around (literal) world-altering happenings. She writes the kind of stories that you keep reading because you want to know what happens next, but also, they make you wonder what you would personally do in the same situation. For this one, there is a mysterious illness that is impacting a college town in California. It starts in a residence hall. One student falls asleep and she doesn't wake up. She's still alive, but nothing can wake her from her slumber. Then, another person is impacted, then another, etcetera. With no clear answers, options for solutions emerge. This is where the ethical dilemmas begin. What do you do to help those who are impacted, while protecting those who aren't? The book follows a variety of residents of the town and students of the college to show how they react and how their various interactions with the illness are addresses. Y'all, this one was beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time. Karen Thompson Walker draws you into the worlds she creates like no other author can. They bring you into the dilemma of the world she has created, while making you ask so many questions of your own life. She also does a really amazing job of showing the variety of options that are available, but never emphasizes one of these as the best way to handle. She really helps you see these are complex issues through the beautiful character stories she also builds. This was an advanced read I got thanks to NetGalley, and y'all are going to want/need to check this one out once it's released into the world in January.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest opinion.

This book is about a sleeping sickness that takes over a remote college town and about the dreams the sleepers have. I found the book to be beautifully written with a 'dream-like' quality to it. The author shows a realistic response to a medical emergency and what happens if that emergency is initially low-key because people were 'just sleeping'. There is no magic solution or answer provided yet I didn't feel like I needed one when finished the book.

The idea that dreams can be historical in nature, predictions of the future, or alternate lives was an interesting way to look at things.

While reading I kept asking myself what I would have done in this situation: as a parent outside the quarantine line, as a school employee within the city, as one of the students exposed but not yet symptomatic. Thompson Walker's first book: Age of Miracles, kept drawing me back as well.

'His voice is rising to a shout, and the more he talks, the less the girls do, as if volume were like oxygen, a thing that runs out.'

'This is how the sickness travels best: through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love.'

'At first they blamed the air.'

I read Karen Thompson Walker's The Age of Miracles and it is one of my favorites. I was bummed (and shocked) to find it was a debut, so I've been eagerly anticipating a new book for a few years. The Dreamers absolutely was worth waiting for.

From the first page, I could tell that this would be a "draw-me-in" type read. Walker's writing is some of my favorite: giving facts in a beautiful way, and always giving little tidbits of future information that leave me wanting more. (and keep reading to find more) If I hadn't started this so late at night, it would have been a one sitting read because I just couldn't put it down.

I was worried with the number of characters that it would be either hard or uninteresting to follow all their stories. However, because each plot was so different and the characters were in such different situations, I had no trouble following all of them and found each one engaging for different reasons. That said, this is a story I wouldn't have minded being 100-200 pages longer so I could delve even more deeply into these characters and this world.

While this may be too light on science for avid sci-fi readers and too "action-light" for regular speculative readers, it was a wonderful for me. It is the type of book that makes someone like me, who doesn't often read sci fi/speculative fiction want to pick up more. One thing is for sure, Karen Thompson Walker is definitely a "must read" author for me for any future releases.

A virus hits the town of Santa Lora, California, which causes people to fall asleep. As the sleeping sickness spreads through the town, everyone is impacted by sickness and the resulting town-wide quarantine: Mei, a college student whose roommate Kara was the first to fall asleep and the first to die, professors Ben and Amy who are isolated with their new baby, Sarah and Libby, the young daughters of an apocalypse-predicting prepper, and more. The sleepers’ brains appear to be dreaming, and the character of life takes on a dreamy cadence as the world becomes stranger and stranger as the spread of the virus widens. The language in this story is lyrical and thought-provoking.

WOW what a book. Just finished reading an uncorrected proof (thanks NetGalley) and it was a 24 hour binge read for me. Such an engaging, intimate exploration of human nature, told through pandemic.

Aside from being lexically beautiful, this book really shines in its unique narrative structure. The author achieves the unusual, a book filled with multiple characters, each of whom you feel connected to. These characters are all so different, so beautifully formed, and I felt emotionally invested in its journey.

I loved the almost philosophical exploration of dreaming towards the end of the book, it poses a lot of big questions and is a real ‘thinker’.

It’s hard to review this without spoilers, but I will say this is one of my favourite reads of 2018. Beautifully written, emotional and engaging.

Dystopian/light science fiction, with an emphasis on its numerous central characters and their relationships and emotions. The central story of an epidemic is used to tie the characters loosely together, with occasional overlaps, and to investigate their back stories, with short chapters telescoping out to depict how the emerging crisis is viewed from outside - both by the characters' families who are not able to reach them, and by those experiencing the story through mass media. The novel is narrated in the present tense and third-person, with short sentences, slipping into past-tense when providing exposition on characters and occasionally using future-tense in order to describe action sequences; this movement is not heavy-handed, and is perhaps explained by the later chapters' ruminations on time, its arbitrariness, and its distortion in dreams. Great visual descriptions throughout, many good set pieces, and a satisfying conclusion. It seems destined to become a movie.

Wow—I whipped through this book, driven both by wanting to know the outcome of the “sleeping sickness” that infects residents of this small college town, and to know what will happen to the various protagonists whose stories are told in this novel.

I loved The Age of Miracles, which also dealt with the changes that are wrought in the lives of everyday people as a result of some uncontrollable natural occurrences. Just as in that novel, Karen Thompson Walker explores how certain rites of passage-having a baby, or falling in love for the first time-are impacted by this unexpected change in the normal functions of society. In addition, she also examines the impact these uncontrollable events have on those people who believe their decisions and actions will provide them with a strong ability to direct their own future.

I was especially left pondering, and moved by, the interplay between dreams and time for each of the dreamers. I almost feel like going back and rereading the story with the knowledge of how each of the characters dreams, to see if that gives me a greater insight into who they each were throughout the book.

I have gone back and forth throughout writing this review between giving it a rating of 4 or 5 stars. I am pretty stingy with my 5 star ratings, so I think I will leave it with four for now, but I wouldn’t be al, that surprised to find that I decide to raise it again at some point in the future. Regardless of my final star rating, I highly recommend this novel.