Tagline:  “Your Dreams Are Not Your Own”

Janie has a special gift, very X-Men:  she can go inside of a person’s dream.  Of course, being that she is not a spandex wearing superhero, but a senior in high school, this proves more problematic than helpful.  See, she hasn’t quite figured out how to control this power.  All she knows is that if someone falls asleep within a certain distance, and then starts to dream, she will be sucked into that dream, whether it’s a friend’s fantasy with another classmate or an unknown student’s vision of a violent attack.  It makes study hall an interesting experience.

WAKE movies pretty quickly, clocking in at 210 pages.  The chapters are relatively long, but each is filled with entries, like a diary, breaking down every few hours of Janie’s life.  So far, the language and content are nothing worse than you’d see on prime-time TV, so even though Janie is 18, I think this book would be appropriate for 16+ readers. 

The main idea is that people’s pasts haunt them in their dreams and by helping them through their dreams, people can find inner peace and move on.  It’s a cool premise, and works in WAKE, though the way the story ends…well, I don’t want to spoil it for anyone…

The sequel to WAKE — FADE — isscheduled for release in early 2009, which means that WAKE doesn’treally end.  In fact, when you close the book, you realize you’ve onlyjust started this story.  WAKE feels like the pilot episode of a TV series.  It’s all about setting up the characters, creating an outline for future adventures.  So you might want to wait and read this one in January, so you can get your hands on FADE right away.