Tim Pratt is an extremely talented, imaginative writer whose fiction spans multiple genres – science fiction, space opera, urban fantasy, superheroes, and even the western genre. His 2021 novel, Doors of Sleep, looks to blend some of those genres together. Doors of Sleep is the first installment of The Journals of Zaxony Delatree, which features the eponymous Zaxony (Zax as he’s referred to throughout most of the novel) who travels to different worlds every time he falls asleep or loses consciousness. As an added bonus, ff he is touching somebody, that person travels with him.
What would you do if you woke up and found yourself in a parallel universe under an alien sky? This is the question Zax Delatree must answer every time he closes his eyes.
Every time Zax Delatree falls asleep, he travels to a new reality. He has no control over his destination and never knows what he will see when he opens his eyes. Sometimes he wakes up in technological utopias, and other times in the bombed-out ruins of collapsed civilizations. All he has to live by are his wits and the small aides he has picked up along the way – technological advantages from techno-utopias, sedatives to escape dangerous worlds, and stimulants to extend his stay in pleasant ones.
Thankfully, Zax isn’t always alone. He can take people with him, if they’re unconscious in his arms when he falls asleep. But someone unwelcome is on his tail, and they are after something that Zax cannot spare – the blood running through his veins, the power to travel through worlds…
Pratt jumps into the story head-first, in the midst of Zax nearing the 1,000th new world his visited via his dream-traveling affliction. We experience the story from Zax’s first person perspective through his personal journal, which given the series title makes sense. By the time we “meet” him, Zax is not exactly a novice at the world-hopping business, he’s been seeing strange new worlds every day for a few years and has struggled and experienced the pain of loss as a result. Which is why when Zax encounters Minna, he is hesitant to allow her to travel with him, because he’s had companions in his travels and it never ended well. But the alien (to him) girl soon proves trustworthy and Zax is not alone anymore and he has a good friend and trusted companion in Minna and later another being named “Vicki.”
While the conflict of continually adjusting to your surroundings is ample dramatic tension, the novel really gains momentum and added tension when an antagonist for Zax comes into play. Worlds ago, Zax befriended a man known as Lector and brought him as a companion in his world-hopping travels. As Zax and Lector’s relationship deepened, Zax learned a little more about why he could travel, how to communicate in each new world, and ways to remain awake longer from the Lector. Unfortunately, Lector revealed himself to be not as friendly as Zax thought, so Zax abandoned him. Zax first indication of this less than benevolent nature: the Lector drew blood from Zax without asking. Unfortunately for Zax, the Lector devised a way to travel from world to world and is following Zax’s path, along with another prior traveling companion.
Pratt does some things quite well here. I was expecting that having read a few of his excellent Marla Mason urban fantasy novels. Zax is a empathic character and there’s more to him than revealed when we initially meet him, so on that count, Pratt has done perhaps the most important job when crafting a story with a first person narrator. The “wow” factor of traveling via falling asleep is simple, yet effective on many levels, because dreams can be seen as other worlds we visit. It is a powerful idea, but Pratt smartly makes it as much of a curse as a gift as visiting strange new worlds would be, the fact that Zax can only move “forward” to new worlds and cannot return to worlds he previously visited, such as his home world. In some ways, Zax isn’t unlike Sam Beckett, from the fantastic late 80s/early 90s Science Fiction show, Quantum Leap. I was also reminded of the short-lived, but excellent television show Awake, starring Jason Isaacs as a man who wakes up in one of two realities when he goes to bed, one where his wife perished in a car crash involving him, his wife, and their son and another where the son perished.
I also appreciated the inversion between protagonist and antagonist. In much of “classic science fiction” the scientist is seen as the hero. In Doors of Sleep, Lector is far from the heroic scientist and is a borderline mad scientist. The character’s name could be seen as a nod to a famous doctor, also not known for being benevolent and possessing rather disturbing appetites.
In Doors to Sleep, Tim Pratt has launched a fascinating series that effectively blurs the lines between science fiction and fantasy the way novels and stories from the earlier days of the genre do. The world-building is tantalizing and engaging, most of the new worlds Zax visits are places I as the reader would like to explore in more detail. However, there’s a strong modern sensibility to Pratt’s approach, especially with the characters he creates. He even throws in some twists near the end and sets the table for the next book in The Journals of Zaxony Delatree. This is a fun, entertaining SF adventure that manages to touch on a few important ethical issues along the way. I know I’m looking forward to where Zax’s story goes next.
Highly recommended
© 2021 Rob H. Bedford
The Journals of Zaxony Delatree, Book 1 | January 2021
Angry Robot Books | Trade Paperback | 264 Pages
http://www.timpratt.org/
Excerpt: https://www.angryrobotbooks.com/shop/year/2021/doors-of-sleep/#tab-excerpt_tab
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
