The Dreamworld

Lost in the Looking Glass has been out for several days now, and since my newsletter releases this week with flow chart quiz to help you determine how long you'd last in the Dreamworld, I've got the Dreamworld on the brain! And so, here I am, venting it into a post about the setting of Through the Looking Glass.

******POTENTIAL SPOILERS AHEAD!!!******

(Depending on what you call a spoiler. I don't go through too many major plot points, but if you want to read Lost in the Looking Glass with a completely clean slate, go do that first before you read this post!!!)

Although we've entered the Dreamworld before in Briar Rose, it was only for a short time, and Briar was on the clock for her mission so we didn't get to explore very much. For Through the Looking Glass, we spend almost the entire book in this strange world, so we have much more time to wonder about details like whether there's air in the Dreamworld :) Also, as opposed to Briar and even Cara, Alice stepped through the mirror body and all, so she's experiencing it in a totally different context.

In my last post about Lost in the Looking Glass, I mentioned that I viewed the Dreamworld as shadowy, organized madness, and I hope that came through in the book. Alice picks up right away that this world has a bit of sentience that, in some places at least, wishes it were more a land where dreams come true, and less of a land where dreams and nightmares grow unchecked. It's dim, shadowed, and oddly still when it should be full of life.

As I referenced later in the book, there was supposed to be a Shepherd appointed to the Dreamworld, back when Istoire was still being formed and "shepherded" through it's early development by the powerful being assigned to it's care. For several reasons, that Shepherd never came into her full power, and so the Dreamworld's development was left directionless. Only the Sleep Fairies and their descendants were left to manage what happened there, and they quickly found themselves overrun.

When I started writing and wandering through the world with Alice, I realized quickly that the further we got away from from Cara's dark mirror, the less orderly the Dreamworld became. As the line of the Sleep Fairies dwindled over the centuries, their focus slowly reduced to the areas that roughly correspond with their country: Spindle. Even those areas are more creepy than dreamy, as we see with the "mirror castle" that Alice explores a little, and other powers take advantage of the less chaotic territory Cara manages.

While Alice is looking out over the Dreamworld with the White Queen, she is able to see the structure that still exists beneath everything that has grown over the last millennia or so, but although it's still there, by the time she gets to the last row, the raucous party that's thrown in her honor is an unwelcome celebration after the horrors she just walked through, and the crown—as predicted—was heavy even when she took it off. Although the bones of the Dreamworld are still there, the nightmares that have grown up with it are almost too deep to see through. All is not yet lost, but it's difficult to see how the deep wounds in this world could be healed, when the rot has been going on for centuries.

There is one place in the Dreamworld that felt different than all the others, and there is a reason for it which will be revealed in future books. Do you know the place I'm speaking of? The only hint I'll give is that it felt different to everywhere else, and it gave a little taste of the setting for the last book in this series, which is a sister to this one—of a sort.