- ASIN: B09WB26BBP
- Publisher: Red Giant Publishing (23 Mar. 2022)
- Language: English
- Print length: 296 pages
- Genre: Noir & Hard Science Fiction
The BookViral Review:
A stylish head trip Dream Phaze – imagination succeeds in teasing the brain and touching the heart to remind us why originality and authenticity make for great reads.
Watters isn’t an author who trades in gloss, storytelling clichés and plot concessions. He knows his narrative subject inside out and the Dream Phaze series has been conceived and written with a knowledge of computers and code but we don’t have to turn pages with long, boring explanations of it and this makes Watters’ plot a whole lot of fun and easily graspable.
Few science fiction authors are capable of marrying ideas and entertainment—one is often sacrificed for the other—but Watters peppers one gripping “dream sequence” after another with cutting details that more often than not are ferociously intense and furiously kinetic.
On this level Dream Phaze – imagination, like Dream Phaze – Germination, is an expressionist noir science fiction, and like all good sci-fi, peers into the future to shed light on a present where we are increasingly being robbed of the most basic freedoms and privacy. Working on our minds and our emotions to deliver both a thriller and a human story with our dreams touted as the ultimate in escapism.
Central to the human story is the key characters of Margot and Saxon. Their story is streamlined and the grace notes, action-free, tend to be the highlights as they grapple with the moral and ethical implications of their world-changing technology. From creating an echo of Walt’s deceased wife to tracking down a rapist and killer who has hacked ZynnComm safeguards there are plenty of philosophical nuggets lurking amid Watters tangled plotting that surely merit closer consideration by his readers.
Delivering action and ideas in equal measure Dream Phaze – imagination proves an uncompromising and top-notch read, It is recommended without reservation.