Review: In Our Dreams Awake
Jason Byron is the leader of a cyberpunk gang in a dystopian, half-drowned world filled with rough-hewn thugs and sinister aliens. An uneasy truce exists between humans and "fish" - amphibious humanoids - with the threat of violence hanging in the dank, neon-stained shadows. All could turn to chaos if the secret of the fish is discovered; a hidden spaceship... concealed by his alien lover.
Two lives. Two realities. Which one is the fantasy, and which one is the truth?
In the Taoist tradition of the Zhuangzi - in which a man wakes from a dream in which he was a butterfly with no knowledge of being human; a dream so vivid that he is uncertain if he is a man dreaming he is a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming he is a man - Jason Byron is a mystery to himself.
In Our Dreams Awake by writers John McGuire and Egg Embry and artists Edgar Salazar and Rolands Kalniņš is a surreal, mind-bending journey. The shift from one world to the next is jarring; not only is the change of setting extreme, so is the difference in the character of the protagonist. The medieval streets give way to the high-tech/low-life floating shanty town that used to be London. The handsome, charming maverick artist gives way to a scarred, furtive drug dealer.
The change of both writer and artist for each version of reality gives an authentic touch to the theme of juxtaposition. Each world looks, sounds and feels entirely unlike the other, yet Jason exists in both. In the land of magic people speak the elegant, cultured language of romantic fantasy. In the futuristic yet grungy metropolis, this is replaced by a novel dialect composed of innovative slang words, à la Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange. There is also a shift in tone here, from high-minded to darkly comic ("Keith" is a swear word, heavily used by Jason's uncouth band of delinquents).
In each version he has a secret to hide at all costs, but the true engima is: Who is the real Jason Byron?
"Our truest life is when we are in our dreams awake."
- Henry David Thoreau
IN OUR DREAMS AWAKE on Kickstarter
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