DREAM WHISPERER

This fantasy debut features a team that hunts monsters from parallel realms during World War I.

It is 1914, and the well-dressed Countess Mathilde von Covey is attending a meeting of “seditious Bosnian Serbs” in Sarajevo’s Kafe Zemljak. There, she encounters the diminutive Gavrilo Princip. He intends to make his mark on history, and, after falling under Covey’s strange spell, he hears her say, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Princip goes on to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which instigates the Great War. Covey isn’t merely alluring, she’s possessed by the Dream Whisperer, an interdimensional being capable of manipulating human hosts, dreams, and global events. The creature’s true goal is to awaken the Sleepers, unearthly beasts that will act in concert as gate openers, ultimately allowing the Outer Gods to return and breed chaos. A handful of talented individuals have committed to stopping Covey, including Cmdr. Fleming of the British Secret Service; Mycroft Holmes, brother of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes; and Dr. Rebecca Mumm of the Museum of Natural History in Paris. When Covey succeeds in waking two Sleepers, Fleming helps destroy them. The heroes then use a rare travel guide by esoteric scholar Friedrich von Junzt to locate temples in Borneo, Bolivia, and elsewhere that house dormant Sleepers. To protect against interlopers, Covey keeps her manservant, the hulking Moloch, nearby. Yet should anything happen to the Dream Whisperer’s current body, he can always jump to another.

Draym’s series opener is a deep crawl through the historical trenches, the first half of which covers the years 1914 to 1917 before jumping to 1921. Much like Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula novels, this adventure peppers keen-eyed readers with references to everything from Jack the Ripper to 1908’s Tunguska event. Mycroft is a wonderful presence who at one point explains that Arthur Conan Doyle invented the nonexistent Watson to “offset my brother’s brilliance.” Throughout the book, whenever Draym sets a scene, readers are treated to a colossal amount of historical background. Realistic portraits of battlefields like Ypres make the ensuing supernatural moments that much more exciting. The author shows the same impressive flair for bringing believable science to the narrative. After studying a Sleeper’s corpse, Mumm says: “The cell walls are exceptionally rigid,” as in fungi, and yet “one would expect polysaccharides in there as long-chain polymers like chitin.” Readers also get the pulpy descriptions that help any genre piece sing (“A viscous, fluorescent, green liquid was dripping from one of seven eye-sockets”). Truly unexpected is Fleming’s elf lineage. His grandmother wishes for him to join the elves as they slip from Earth—via breaches in reality—because of humanity’s destructive “perpetual economic growth.” Mumm is also gracefully realized as someone who prefers the beauty of nature to that of a church. When the Dream Whisperer does initiate the novel’s most predictable twist, it’s nevertheless thrillingly executed. Draym makes the right choice to skip 1918 and the influenza years. This allows the story to halt in 1921, with the promise of darker horrors, both real and H.P. Lovecraft–inspired, to come.

A panoramic, detail-driven historical fantasy that delivers plenty of heroes to root for.