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Dreamhunter / Elizabeth Knox.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Knox, Elizabeth. Dreamhunter duet ; 1.Publication details: Sydney ; Auckland, N.Z. : Fourth Estate, 2005.Description: 434 pages : maps ; 21 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 0732281938 (pbk.) :
Other title:
  • Dream hunter
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
Prologue -- Talented family -- Try -- Sandman -- Open secrets -- Measures -- Rainbow opera.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Copy number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Teenage Fiction Davis (Central) Library Teenage Fiction KNO 1 Pending hold T00417911
Total holds: 1

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

'...amazing and unique ... like nothing else I've ever read. You will want to go there.' Stephenie Meyer - author of the Twilight Saga Suitable for ages 12+

Fast-paced and dazzlingly imaginative, Dreamhunter will draw the reader into an extraordinary fictional world in which dreams are as vividly described as the cream cakes in the tea shop, the sand on the beach or teenage first love. Set in 1906, Dreamhunter describes a world very similar to ours, except for a special place, known simply as the Place, where only a select group of people can go. these people are called Dreamhunters and they harvest dreams which are then transmitted to the general public for the purposes of entertainment, therapy - or terror and political coercion. Fifteen-year-old cousins Laura Hame and Rose tiebold both come from famous dreamhunting families, but only Laura proves to be blessed with the gift and once inside the Place she finds out what happened to her missing dreamhunter father and reveals how the government has used dreams to control an ever-growing population of convicts and political dissenters.

Novel by a New Zealand author.

Prologue -- Talented family -- Try -- Sandman -- Open secrets -- Measures -- Rainbow opera.

Followed by: Dreamquake.

Prequel to Dreamquake.

2 5 6 8 11 20 21 22 27 37 47 60 74 80 85 89 91 93 94 96 98 100 105 135 149 151 154 161 164

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

1 On a hot day near the end of sum­mer, Laura Hame sat with her fa­ther; her cousin, Rose; and her aunt Grace against the fern-fringed bank on a forest track. She watched as her uncle Chorley and the rest of the picnic party passed out of sight around the next bend. Chorley turned and waved before he disappeared. Laura stared at the empty, sun-splashed path. She saw black bush bees zipping back and forth through the air above the nettles and heard the muffled roar of Whynew Falls, where the rest of the party were headed. Laura and Rose; Laura's father, Tziga; and her aunt Grace were sitting under a sign. The sign read, CAUTION: you are now only100 yards from the border to the place. "The falls are loud today," Tziga said. "It must have poured up in the hills." They listened to the cascade pound and thump. Laura, who had never been allowed near the falls, tried to imagine how they would sound up close. Her father said, "Think how startled Chorley would be if one of these girls suddenly skipped up behind him." Aunt Grace squinted at Laura's father. "What do you mean?" "Come on, Grace. Why don't we just get up and wander along that way?" "Tziga!" Grace was shocked. Laura and Rose were too. The family had owned a summer house at nearby Sisters Beach for ten years, and at least once a year they would go with friends for a picnic up in the old beech forest. Every summer those who could would continue along the track to see the falls. And every summer the girls were forced to wait at the sign with their dreamhunter parents. Tziga Hame and Grace Tiebold couldn't go and view Whynew Falls themselves because, one hundred yards from the honest and accurate warning sign, they would cross an invisible border. They would walk out of the world of longitude and latitude, and into a place called simply the Place. Tziga and Grace could no more continue on to Whynew Falls than Laura's uncle Chorley could walk into the Place. Uncle Chorley, like almost everyone else, couldn't go there. Tziga and Grace were part of a tiny minority for whom the rules of the world were somewhat different. "Come on, Grace," said Tziga. "Why should we make the girls go through all the ceremony of a Try? It's only for the benefit of the Regulatory Body, so they can see their rules en­forced. Why can't we just find out now, in a minute, in pri­vate?" Rose wailed, "It's against the law!" Tziga glanced at Rose, then looked back at Grace. He was a quiet man, self-contained, secretive even--but his manner had changed. His face had. Laura thought that looking at him now was like peering into a furnace--its iron doors sprung open on fire. Her father was a small man. He was a mess, as usual, his shirt rumpled and grass-stained, his cream linen jacket knotted around his waist, his hat pushed back on his dark, springy hair. Laura's aunt Grace wasn't any better turned out. Both dreamhunters were thin, tanned, and dry-skinned, as all dreamhunters became over time. Rose was al­ready taller than her spare and weathered mother. She was white and gold and vivid, like her father, Chorley, and like Chorley's sister, Laura's dead mother. Laura had, unfortu­nately, not inherited her mother's stature or coloring. She was little and dark, like her father. But--Laura thought--her father, though small and shabby, still had the aura belonging to all great dreamhunters. She liked to imagine that the aura was a residue of the dreams they'd carried. For when Tziga Hame and Grace Tiebold ventured into the Place, dreams were what they brought back with them. Dreams that were more forceful, coherent, and vivid than those supplied to all people by their sleeping brains. Dreams they could share with others. Dreams they could perform, could sell. Laura's father was saying, "We were pioneers, Grace. You didn't 'Try,' you crept past the cairn beyond Doorhandle early one morning when there wasn't a soul on the road. Do you remember? That moment was all your own. There wasn't any­one standing by with a clipboard and contracts." Laura saw that her aunt had gone pale. Grace stood up. Laura thought Grace meant to walk away, back toward the road, to go off in a huff and put an end to Laura's father's crazy talk. But then she saw Grace turn to look up the track toward the border. Laura's heart gave a thump. Her father got to his feet too. Rose didn't move. She said, "Wait! What about our Try? You've even bought us outfits--our hats with veils." "Rose thinks she's a debutante," Laura's father said. "I do not!" Rose jumped up. "All right, I'll go! I'll go now! I'm not scared. I was only trying to follow the law. But if you don't care about it, why should I?" "Good," said Laura's father. He offered his hand to Laura. She looked at it, then took it and let him help her up. She busied herself brushing dry moss from her skirt. The others began to amble slowly along the path. Laura caught up with them and gave her hand to Rose, who took it and squeezed it tight. Rose's hand was cold, much cooler than the air, which, even in the shade of the forest, was as marinated in heat as the open paddocks, the dusty roads, and the beaches of Coal Bay. Rose's hand was chilly, her palm coated with sweat. Around the first bend was another, very similar. The track was flanked by black beech trunks. The sun angled in and lit up bright green nettles and bronze shoots of supplejack. "I guess we won't see the Place until we're there," said Rose. "That is right," Grace said. "There's nothing to see. No line on the ground." Tziga said, "The border is around the next corner." They didn't slow, or hurry. Laura felt that their progress was almost stately. She felt as though she were being escorted up the aisle, or perhaps onto a scaffold. She didn't want to know yet. It was too soon. In two weeks Laura and Rose were due to Try. Any person who wanted to enter the Place for the first time had to do so under the eye of an organization called the Dream Regulatory Body. The Body had been set up ten years before. It employed rangers--those who could go into the Place but couldn't carry dreams out of it--to patrol the uncanny territory and its bor­ders. The dream parlors, salons, and palaces in which work­ing dreamhunters performed had to obey laws enforced by the Regulatory Body and its powerful head, the Secretary of the Interior, Cas Doran. The parlors, salons, and palaces were businesses and had to have licenses. Dreamhunters, too, had to have licenses. A Try was the first step on the road to a license, and a livelihood. The Body held two official Tries a year--one in early spring and one in late summer. Each Try found hundreds of teen­agers lined up at the border. It wasn't compulsory to Try, but many did as soon as they were allowed, because dreams repre­sented a guarantee of work and the possibility of wealth and fame. Any children who showed an inclination--vivid dream­ing, night terrors, a tendency to sleepwalk--were thought, by hopeful families, to have a chance at the life. A dreamhunter or ranger in the family was another indicator of potential tal­ent. More boys than girls Tried, since parents were more per­missive with boys, and the candidates were, by and large, in their midteens. The earliest age of a Try was legally set at fif­teen. Rose and Laura had celebrated their fifteenth birthdays that summer. Walking along the Whynew Falls track hand in hand with her cousin, Laura felt desperately unprepared for an im­promptu Try. Every night that summer as she'd put her head down on her pillow, she had mentally ticked off another day-- the time narrowing between her and her life's big deciding moment. She had felt as though she were hurtling down a slope that got steeper and steeper the farther she fell. For Laura knew that, after her Try, she would either be in her father's world or remain at her school--Founderston Girls' Academy. She would have a calling or be free to continue her education, to travel, to "come out" when she was sixteen and appear at every ball that season. If she was free, Laura knew she'd inherit the Hame wealth--but not the Hame glamour. And, free, she would lose Rose, because Rose fully expected to walk into the Place, fall asleep there, dream, and carry back her dreams intact, vivid, and marvelous. For Rose had already been into the Place, had been a number of times, because Grace Tiebold had gone on catching dreams when she was pregnant with Rose. (When her sister-in-law Verity said to her, "Did you ever think that you would go there and leave the baby behind?" Grace had put a hand on her stomach and laughed at Verity--also pregnant--saying, "Oh! Darling! What a bloody thought.") As Laura approached the bend around which her father had said the border would be, she began to drag her feet. Rose gave her hand a sharp tug. "Come on," she whispered. "Stick with me." "Tziga," said Grace. "Just tell me this--why now? We could have tried last year, or the year before, or when they were only ten. We could have whipped them across quickly when they were really tiny, and they wouldn't even have known where they were. We would have learned whether they could cross or not, and just waited to make it official." Laura saw her father shake his head at Grace, but he didn't answer her. "Why do you need to know now?" Grace asked again. Laura gave a little sob of tension. Then she crashed into her aunt, who had suddenly stopped in her tracks. "Jesus!" Grace said. They all stepped on one another. When Laura righted herself, she saw a ranger approaching along the path. The man came up to them. He looked, in quick succes­sion, surprised, suspicious, and polite. "Mr. Hame, Mrs. Tiebold," he said respectfully. "Good day to you. Are you go­ing In?" Then he looked beyond the adults at the two girls. He stared pointedly. "No, of course not," said Grace. "We are just waiting for my husband and our friends. They went along to the falls." "I see," said the ranger. He stood blocking their path. He cleared his throat. "Perhaps it would be wiser to take these young ladies back to the sign." "We do know exactly where the border is," Grace said, frosty. "It isn't as if it moves." "It is very well marked," Tziga said, neutral. "We're not likely to make any mistakes." "But you can't always keep your hand on your children near the border--best not to go too near." The ranger was quoting a bit of the Regulatory Body's official advice, saying something he no doubt had to say to many people on his patrols. But because he was addressing the undisputed great­est dreamhunters--one of them the very first--he at least had the decency to blush. "I'm very sorry," he said. "We're not dopes, you know," Rose said, indignant. "Laura and I are Trying in two weeks, for heaven's sake. Why would we spoil that by sneaking across now?" "It is better to be careful," the ranger said. He focused on a point above Rose's bleached straw sun hat and composed himself into a stiff state of official dignity. He looked block-headed. "Come on, girls," Grace said. She turned Rose and Laura around and propelled them back along the track. Laura swallowed hard to suppress her sigh of relief. The ranger hovered for a moment. He seemed to realize that Tziga Hame meant to stay put, so he followed Grace and the girls. † † † At Whynew Falls, Laura's uncle Chorley Tiebold filmed the other picnickers as they requested. He shot them pointing up at the waterfall, wet from spray. He filmed them jostling and giggling at the pool's edge. When he was finished, Chorley packed up his movie cam­era, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and followed his neighbors back along the track. He was itching to return to his work­shop in Summerfort, the family's house at Sisters Beach. He wanted to see whether he'd managed to capture on film the scales of shadow pushing down the white face of the cascade. Chorley picked up his pace to catch up with the others. He passed the orange-painted circle of tin tacked to a tree trunk--the border marker. He went on a few steps, then for some reason glanced back. He saw the track, tree ferns, gray, knotted sinews of a redbush vine. Then he saw a flicker of color and shadow in the air, and his brother-in-law, Tziga, materialized on the track behind him. Chorley flinched. He had filmed this phenomenon--peo­ple passing into and out of the Place on its busiest border post, the cairn beyond Doorhandle. It was Chorley's best-known film; he'd sold copies to all corners of the world. Everyone wanted to know just what it looked like--and that it didn't look like trick photography. It didn't. It was a quiet, unfussy, terrifying sight. The only time Chorley had seen it and hadn't felt frightened was when, shortly before they mar­ried, he and Grace had played a stalking game in the long grass on the bluff above the river at Tricksie Bend. Grace, in­side the Place, hadn't known where Chorley would be outside of it, and he hadn't known where she would emerge. She jumped back and forth, sometimes startled to find he was close by and could grab her. It had made Chorley anxious, made his heart ache to see Grace come and go like that--go where he couldn't follow. But it was magical too. "There you are," said Tziga. "You always come last when you're carrying your camera." He stepped around Chorley and walked ahead of him, turning back now and then to speak. Looking up, for Chorley was quite a bit taller. "You know--there's far too much interest in Laura's and Rose's Try," he said. Chorley couldn't remember anyone mentioning the girls' Try at the picnic. Not even Rose, who grew more excited the nearer the event came. He said, "I may be following you, Tziga"--he poked his brother-in-law with the legs of his camera--"but I don't follow you." "There's too much interest in the outcome of their Try. That's all I'm saying. I don't want them besieged with public­ity, or contracts." "That's why we've bought them hats with veils, to keep their faces out of the newspapers," Chorley said. "To keep it all as private as possible. We could, at least, all agree to do that much. You do realize that I've been trying to talk to you--and Grace--about this for months now?" "I know. But there was never any question that they'd Try as soon as the law allowed." Chorley took one hand off his precious camera to grab Tziga's arm. "I questioned it," he said. "The law can say what it likes, but I think they're still too young." "They want to Try," Tziga said. He looked very unhappy. Chorley said, "Rose wants to--Laura just doesn't want to be left out." He watched Tziga's face go remote. Even Chorley, who knew his brother-in-law better than anyone, couldn't tell whether Tziga was offended, angry to be told something about his own daughter that he should know himself, or whether he had just dropped down into a colder and deeper reach of his usual sadness. "Tziga," Chorley said, and gave the arm he held a little shake. He was annoyed with himself for poking the chisel of his complaints into this crack in his brother-in­law's certainty. "Look," he said, "it'll soon be over. It'll be de­cided one way or the other." "Yes." Chorley told Tziga to get a move on. The others would wonder where they were. "You do know it will be all right whatever happens," he said as they went along. "I'm not a dreamhunter, and I'm all right. Grace and you are dream-hunters, and you are too--all right, I mean. Aren't you?" He gave Tziga yet another chance to confide in him, to tell him why, lately, he'd seemed so hunted. Tziga just made a faint affirmative noise, then asked Chor­ley if this was the camera Chorley wanted him to take into the Place. Chorley immediately forgot his worries. "Yes," he said. "Are you saying you will? Finally?" Tziga said yes, he'd take Chorley's camera In tomorrow. Chorley was rapt, and for the next hour, long after they'd caught up with the others, he talked. He gave instructions, advice, almost gave a shooting script for the film he most wanted to make but couldn't make himself. Tziga interrupted only once, when they reached the cars, which were parked at the gate of the farm beside Whynew Falls Reserve. He said to Grace, "There he is," and tilted his head in the direction of a man in a duster coat, a shadow against the tangled trunks of the whiteywood forest. "He's seeing us off," Grace growled. "Who is it?" Chorley asked. "A ranger," said Rose. Chorley saw Grace give Rose and Laura a sharp look. The girls got into the car. Chorley said to the dreamhunters, "Do you think that ranger is watching you?" "Of course not," said Grace. "Yes," said Tziga. "I'm being watched. The Regulatory Body has a big investment in me. Contracts. That sort of thing." He made one of the gestures peculiar to him--seeming to crumble something in his right hand and cast it away into the air. Then he went around the front of the car to crank it for Chorley. Excerpted from Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox. Copyright (c) 2005 by Elizabeth Knox. Published in 2005 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher. Excerpted from Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Knox's (The Vintner's Luck, for adults) debut for YA readers, the first in the Dreamhunter Duet, recalls Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's sci-fi masterpiece Roadside Picnic. Both tell of a mysterious geographic region (here called "the Place") with unusual powers and properties, and of the societal caste made up of those designated to explore it. The Place is where dreams originate; dreamhunters enter it, capture dreams in their minds, then return to "perform" them for the masses at the Rainbow Opera palace. The novel centers on 15-year-old Laura Hame, whose father Tziga is the legendary dreamhunter who discovered the Place as a young man. Laura is about to have her "Try," a coming-of-age ritual which will test her sensitivity to dreams. She succeeds and, a few days later, her father vanishes. Laura ventures into the Place to find him, but instead receives a letter from him, confiding in her the essence of the Place and saddling her with a terrible mission-to clear up a mess of his own making. Knox's fascinating story imagines the intersection of a haunting dream-world with a gritty real world. A Regulatory Body oversees dreamhunters as if they were mundane laborers, maps point out the exact spots in the Place where certain dreams reside, and an industry emerges to sell eager customers the exact dreams they seek. And what Laura learns about how the government really uses dreams (especially in prison reform) makes for biting commentary. This fully imagined world will surely lure readers back for multiple readings. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

School Library Journal Review

Gr 5-9-Laura Hame and her cousin Rose, 14, live in a recognizable early-20th-century society, realistically portrayed but for one thing: "the Place," discovered about 20 years earlier by Laura's father. It lies outside geographical boundaries, and only select people are able to enter and experience dreams there. These dreamhunters then "perform" their received dreams for large theater audiences, and those in attendance go to sleep and experience them. At the time of this story, dreams have become big business and are embroiled in issues of social control (especially the control of prisoners) and power politics. When Laura's father disappears, the girl takes enormous risks first to try to find him, and then to complete his mission. While the author leaves tantalizing clues throughout the novel, the plot moves slowly at first. However, patient readers will find themselves rewarded by the riveting action in the final third of the book. Relationships between the characters, especially Laura and Rose, are given center stage, but their interaction flags in the middle of the book. Particularly touching is the relationship between Laura and a golem-type creature sculpted out of sand in the magical world of the Place. Dry, unchanging, with nothing either fully living or dead, no wind or sounds, it is eerily suffused with atmosphere and powerfully portrayed. This novel, the first of a "duet" of books, concludes neither with a cliffhanger nor at "the end," but in the middle of the action. It will appeal to lovers of fantasy set in the real world, who will eagerly await the resolution in the second volume.-Sue Giffard, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, New York City (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

Gr. 10-12. Readers pining for a fantasist to rival Philip Pullman or Garth Nix may have finally found what they seek in New Zealander Knox, the author of numerous novels for adults. Knox sets her first YA novel in a fictional nation called Southland, where turn-of-the-century society is coming to terms with a geographical marvel called the Place, a harvesting ground for dreams that can be caught and sold to sleeping customers. Fifteen-year-old cousins Rose and Laura belong to a first family of dream hunting: Laura's father discovered the Place 20 years before, and Rose's celebrity mother is a sought-after dream-palace performer. When a test reveals that only reluctant Laura, not pert, confident Rose, has inherited the gift, Laura must contend not only with her shaken relationship with her cousin but also with the disappearance of her father, who has left behind puzzling messages about the true nature of dreams. Although Laura's transformation from wilting violet to intrepid avenger seems too abrupt, Knox's wide-angle narrative convincingly explores the nuances of the charismatic extended family and the personal and political implications of the dream-hunting phenomenon. Questions are not so much answered as deepened in anticipation of book 2 in the highly promising Dreamhunter Duet. --Jennifer Mattson Copyright 2006 Booklist

Horn Book Review

(Middle School, High School) This first entry in New Zealander Knox's two-part fantasy is an engrossing blend of Edwardian civility, family love, and powerfully imagined dreamscape. Knox writes of an island country where some, called ""dreamhunters,"" are able to enter an arid landscape invisible to those who don't have the gift. The ""Place"" is a geography of dreams; dreamhunters collect them, bring them back to the everyday world, and, through mass sleepovers, share them with the public. Fifteen-year-old Laura Hame is the daughter of the land's most potent dream-hunter; when she enters the Place, she catches nightmares linked to her father's recent disappearance. With the extraordinary gift he has left her -- a servant made of sand -- she begins to untangle a web of exploitation that threatens the Place itself. Knox's writing is rich and interesting; her knack for letting words resonate with both their literal and figurative meanings is reminiscent of Margaret Mahy. (""A figure of speech and sand,"" Laura thinks as she looks at the sandman her father has molded and sung into being for her.) The metaphorical weight of the invented Place -- as well as its haunting physicality -- is impressive. Altogether, a highly original exploration of the idea of a collective unconscious, mixed with imagery from the raising of Lazarus and with the brave, dark qualities of the psyche of an adolescent female. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Kirkus Book Review

A lyrical, intricate and ferociously intelligent fantasy explores the ramifications of treating dreams as commodities. Laura Hame, the adolescent daughter of the first and most famous "dreamhunter," is content with her privileged life, dominated by her confident cousin Rose. Everything changes when she becomes one of the tiny minority able to enter the otherworldly "Place," where free-range dreams can be captured and brought back to be sold--for healing, for entertainment and for other, darker, purposes. But when Laura's father mysteriously disappears, she and Rose are thrust into a web of official intrigue and deceit, and Laura discovers that there is more to her heritage than she ever suspected. Knox starts off slowly, gradually piling on the details of two utterly convincing worlds--one reminiscent of a genteel, turn-of-the-century Australia, the other arid, unsettling and surreal--both of which mask underlying corruption and grim purpose. The characters display equal complexity, with hidden depths and tragic flaws. Once the plot gathers momentum, it builds inexorably to a nightmare climax that satisfies fully while pointing to the promised sequel. Provocative and compelling. (Fantasy. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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