DOORS OF SLEEP by Tim Pratt – Review

I received this book for free from the Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Doors of Sleep by Tim Pratt
Series: Journals of Zaxony Delatree #1
Published by Angry Robot on January 12 2021
Genres: Adult, Science fiction
Pages: 272
Format: eARC
Source: Publisher
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The nitty-gritty: Inventive and engaging, Doors of Sleep is the feel-good sci-fi story you didn’t know you needed.

If you’re looking for an upbeat, quirky, feel good story to start off 2021, then you cannot go wrong with Doors of Sleep. This book was such a happy surprise, and I can’t believe this is my first time reading Tim Pratt! With an almost retro sci-fi vibe, Pratt has managed to write an entertaining story with loveable characters, a thrilling plot, some timely social commentary, and plenty of heart. I was also impressed by how imaginative Pratt’s worlds were, and I found myself wishing some of them were real.

This is the travel journal of Zaxony Dyad Euphony Delatree, or Zax for short. For the past three years or so, Zax has had the unfortunate ability to travel to a different universe every time he falls asleep. This means that when the story begins, Zax has already been to nearly one thousand different worlds, each unique and with its own set of dangers and challenges. Zax doesn’t understand why this is happening to him, only that he doesn’t know how to stop it. He’s been able to gather various drugs over time that allow him to fall asleep quickly and get out of sticky situations, but he can never stay awake long enough to fully appreciate some of the better worlds he’s discovered.

Zax can take someone with him from one world to the next, as long as they are asleep, and so he’s had several traveling companions over the years. But they’ve never lasted very long for various reasons, and so Zax is mostly lonely. One lost companion, however, is a scientist known as the Lector, the man who helped Zax in the beginning by studying his blood and figuring out ways to help him stay awake longer. He also injected Zax with something called a linguistic virus which allows him to communicate with anyone on his travels, no matter what language they speak. However, we soon learn that Zax left the Lector behind when his methods became suspect, and now he is trying to stay one step ahead of him, as he suspects the Lector is trying to catch him.

When the story opens, Zax has woken up in an orchard and soon meets a girl named Minna, who offers him some blue apples from one of the trees. Minna ends up joining Zax, as her world offers only a harsh existence of subservience, and she wants nothing more than to leave and go somewhere else. But the Lector isn’t far behind, and it doesn’t take Zax and Minna long to figure out what he’s up to: the Lector intends to take over the multiverse, and he needs Zax to do it.

I’ll admit the beginning of the story is a little slow and meandering, and after experiencing Zax jump to ten or twelve different worlds, I began to wonder if that’s all there was to this book—lots of really cool vignettes where Zax encounters more and more interesting and dangerous people, robots, and creatures, but nothing much happens. But at about the 33% mark, once Zax and Minna meet a new character named Vicki, the story really takes off. Pratt’s grand vision of his vast multiverse could have easily spiraled out of control, but I was pleased to see how well he reigned in his story, keeping the focus on a few main characters and making their stories the center of attention. For the most part, we see everything from Zax’s point of view (except for a few times when other characters fill in parts of the story), which made Doors of Sleep feel intimate and focused.

Which brings me to the characters. I absolutely loved Minna and Vicki in particular, although Zax is a pretty good character as well. Minna is a smart, resourceful woman who has been through terrible hardship on her home world. She’s part plant and has the ability to photosynthesize. She is able to regrow body parts if necessary, in the event of injury, and as we find out, she’s very hard to kill. Minna saves the day a lot in this story, especially when it comes to the nefarious antics of the Lector, and Zax is better off having met and befriended her. Zax and Minna meet Vicki on a world made of shattered crystals, and I think I’ll save that surprise for you to discover yourself. Let’s just say that Vicki is a marvelous creation, and the three characters together were my favorite part of the story.

Zax, Minna and Vicki are all good people (and I use the term “people” lightly!) and only want to help others. This was such a refreshing change from some of the more grim stories I’ve been reading. In Zax’s home world, he was a “harmonizer,” which is like a moderator who tries to help others resolve their disputes. Zax’s code of honor is to never harm a living creature, but of course he struggles with this whenever the Lector shows up. All this goodness is offset by the Lector, who to be honest, was almost a caricature of an evil genius. His big, evil plan to take over all the worlds was fairly predictable, and as a bad guy he was more annoying than scary. But I do like what Pratt does to his character at the end, which wasn’t predictable at all.

The author came up with a really good hook for his story, a multiverse filled with wonderful diversity and different levels of danger, depending on what world you end up on. Pratt’s imagination is off the charts, and I loved experiencing each new world, even if some of them were very brief visits. Here are few examples: a “bubble” world where a civil war has separated everyone into different bubbles, where you only live with people who share the same beliefs and ideals as you; a fishing village ruled by a living lighthouse where people emerge from the sea each night lugging nets of shells, fish and gears; a world of subterranean engines where slaves labor in mines for insect-like aliens. One gets the impression that the author will never run out of ideas for his worlds! 

And because I loved the characters so much, there was always a sense of worry that they would become separated. After all, if one falls asleep without the other, the sleeper will go to another world without his companion, and the twist about travelling like this is that Zax can’t control where he goes. In all his travels, he’s never visited the same world twice, and finding a lost companion would be nearly impossible! This gave the story a nice sense of tension and kept me frantically turning the pages.

Pratt throws in some interesting twists and surprises near the end, and I fervently hope there will be a sequel, because the ending practically demands one! I’m so glad I had the chance to read this quirky book, and I look forward to whatever Tim Pratt writes next.

Big thanks to the publisher for supplying a review copy.