Janneke De Beer (2025)
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This book was a free Advanced Reader Copy from Library Thing. I'm encouraged (but not required) to leave reviews in exchange for the free books.
I left the following review on the Library Thing website:
In a dystopian future where political parties control the world government, a Mission Impossible / Ocean's 11 type team of experts is assembled to rescue a prisoner from a prison on an island in the Irish Sea.
The book opens with Mumilaaq Kuuluuiipiq preparing to steal a monkey from the zoo because she wants a monkey. When she returns home, there's a woman waiting to talk to her about a job because the stranger needs someone who can break into any place. A few more are recruited, including a hacker and the brother of the prisoner.
Unlike the teams I mentioned earlier, no one's safety is guaranteed, which we learn soon enough.
The rescue proceeds smoothly, and it's only afterwards that things start to go sideways. Unfortunately, the narrative goes a little sideways, and experimental, as well, making it a little difficult to follow.
Speaking of hard to follow, some of the characters occasionally speak in their native tongue. This is fine with the ebook's translator can handle it. However, Mumilaaq occasionally speaks in what I thought were symbols but is just a different alphabet, one which the translator couldn't work with. Toward the end of the book, I learned she spoke Inuktut, the main language of Iqaluit (in the Canadian territory of Nunavut). Interesting, but I have no idea what she was saying.
Anyway, there are unforeseen dangers and complications after the rescue, along with secret agendas, backstabbing, and broken promises. Nobody is really safe. Welcome to the Party.
A few other notes that didn't need to be in the Library Thing review. Some of this stuff might contain spoilers.
I have discovered that Dream Sweet in a Minor Sea is a pun or parody of the song title "Dream Sweet in a Sea Major", which itself is a pun on the phrase "Dream Suite in C Major". The song is written in C Major. Moving on.
As soon as the first person was blown up in their car, I knew that this wasn't going to go well for anybody. Oddly, from the excerpts that begin each chapter, I thought that the character was going to have a future ahead of him. I guess I missed what the date on that interview was.
A lot of stuff happens off-stage, and you have to read those things to understand what's going on.
The bit were the hacker is having a break-down didn't work for me -- this was when one AI murders a second AI which appears to be a part of her own personality. We're left to guess whether or not she'll survive.
There was a second experimental section where the same scene is told side-by-side by two different characters, one who is searching upstairs and the other who is searching downstairs. The problem is that niether character is anybody. They're both extras, and they're both on the same side, so they have essentially the same point of view.
This was weird to read in as an ebook, because I was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling ... and then I have to scroll back. They weren't the same length, so it didn't make sense to go back and forth. If there had been breaks in the text, then maybe it might've made sense to try that, but I didn't.
I enjoyed this book, but I thought it fell about once the resuce went sideways, so I knocked it down a star.
If you stumbled across my page via the Internet, please check out my short book series, Burke Lore Briefs. A fantastical foursome of flash fiction and short stories.
