Sam Gardener is the new student at Witch Lake High; a place with just as many secrets as there are students. Sam is a Dreamwalker; someone that can enter other people’s dreams. But their dreams are his reality. Their fear of sharks can leave him drowning in bed, their fantasies of gun fighting can leave him with real bullet holes. So Sam avoids everyone to keep from accidentally entering their dreams and never coming out. Rhi is a ghost and a descendant of the McCarthy line of witches called Protectors. Her family has been cursed and the only living McCarthy is under attack from a necromancer hiding in the school. Sam is the only person that can see Rhi and to protect their friendship and his teacher Ms. McCarthy he must learn how to control the dreams that have left him horribly scarred.

I like this book in the same way that I like the Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series. It’s fun and vaguely campy, the school and student body have some evil secrets and Sam and his friends must band together to fight back. While the character of Sam is well defined along with his dreamwalking powers I felt that his connections to his friends were ambiguous until it’s just stated that they were now friends. And the antagonist necromancer isn’t really defined as well as I thought he should be seeing’s how he is the central bad guy of the story. I would have enjoyed one or two scenes of him in his basement cooking up something evil (figuratively). What I enjoyed was the mythology of the world, the witches curse, and the tantalizing peeks into the larger things going on in the world. I liked the idea of Sam and his friends romping around people’s dreams and watching Sam as he slowly learns how to become a Dreamwalker rather than a dream bystander. The characters do a lot of rambling as they fill in plot points with large chunks of dialogue. The interesting part is that the characters realize this, apologize for it, and then continue with the rambling. I wish there was more showing instead of telling. While the ending was rather lackluster the story often alludes to several wondrously bizarre things going in the small town of Witch Lake and I can’t wait to see how Sam and his dreamwalking ability resolves those conflicts.

Pages: 211
ASIN: B00CVER1GY

Find out more about the book at http://witch-lake.com/