Dreamwood

I enjoyed reading Dreamwood. Lucy was believable, if a little slow on the uptake in some things, for all her cleverness. She had a little bit of the Hermione Granger about her, without the understanding of people. The characters and communities were well put together, ranging from outback towns, through native people’s communities (more ‘modern’ than the settler’s outpost), to wild woods and plains.I felt the plot held up most of the time, although I was distracted by the scale of the forest she was in. From the description of the place when she looked at the map, I had imagined a much smaller area of land; this one took days, if not weeks to travel through – and it didn’t seem to be because of a need to hack one’s way through jungle. I was also distracted by being on open fields surrounded by trees, heading towards some hilly woods, yet guided all the while by the line of the ocean in the distance. Something wrong with the sightlines in that, I thought.Technicalities apart, this was a good scary story for middle grade (older kids) readers. Some of it was very scary. The first dream sequence was brilliantly written, and had me completely involved. Mechanical inventions generally worked well. The author did a good bit of world-building here, even if I could be a bit fussy over details.A good story with plenty of twists and surprises. I could class it as mild horror for MG, but nothing worse than Disney put us oldies through.