Dreamspawn: A Nightmare On Elm Street Novel

Dreamspawn: A Nightmare On Elm Street Novel by Christa Faust

I wasn't expecting much when I first read this book, way back in 2005. Suffer The Children had left me feeling cold, and I expected this to be more of the same. I re-read this book at least once a year - it is excellent.

I feel I have to clarify that statement - it's not great literature, no novel based on this movie franchise could ever become a classic. However it has engaging characters and a good story. I don't need anything else from a book like this - it's entertaining, pure and simple.

It's not a fan favourite, largely because Freddy is very much a background character - aside from a short appearance in the prologue, we don't see him again until well after the halfway mark. Maybe it's just me, but that is one of the things I really like about this book.

It gives the characters time to establish themselves, and even grow, before introducing Freddy into their lives. It helps you relate to them more - we already know Freddy. We don't need him to show up early on, his character doesn't need to be established. I'm not familliar with Christa Fausts work - but her characters certainly shine in this book.

Speaking of Freddy - Faust has a much better handle on him. He's still not quite the Freddy of the movies and I can't quite hear Robert Englund delivering the dialogue (except in a few instances, where it is spot on) - but you have to accept that this is a different medium. Prose, not film. So some differences will always present themselves - regardless this is much closer to the Freddy I know and love than the character in Suffer The Children (in which Freddy seems like a parody of himself). Since we're counting, he said 'Bitch' twice in this novel.

My biggest problem with 'Suffer' was the dialogue - it was forced and unnatural, in virtually all instances. It completely took you out of the story, and made it difficult to relate to the characters on any real level.

Here it's not so bad - most of the dialogue feels real, and there are only a few instances where something doesn't quite ring true. But that's always going to be a problem when you have to have exposition in a book. During some exposition a character will use a word of phrase that you would never hear in the real world - but these are few and far between. In general the dialogue is excellent and feels real.

The characters are once again a small group of social misfits and rejects. Except since we spend so much time with the characters prior to Freddy showing up, that they have genuine depth. Particuarly Jane, the main character. Her lack of self-confidence and the doubt that plagues her feels real, and not just like a cheap trick to con the readers into empathising with her. We get to know her history, which makes her feel like a real person rather than 'just' a character in a book. Faust seems to have resisted the temptation to go with Freddy-Fodder characters, and craft actual people.

I only have a couple of major problems with the book. A sequence in which a popular girl (minor character), being terrorized by Freddy is more concerned with her clothes than the fact that her friends are dying around her - and that Freddy is now after her. This feels like the authors attack on that kind of air-headed bimbo, the self-obsessed shallow kind we all know. But it doesn't work - because I don't care how self-obsessed anyone is, they wouldn't be thinking "I hope these boots aren't out of style" whilst being chased by a murderer. It's meant to be funny, I'm sure... but it feels like a slightly odd intrusion into a story which is otherwise tight and focused.

Also the ending - both this and Suffer end with the main character institutionalized. Okay, fair enough... but both novels having a similar ending doesn't work for me. Part of the problem with every novel being written by a different author is that certain ideas repeat themselves very quickly - this is not their fault however. Black Flame should have been on the ball. I think the ending works better in this book though, it's an odd ending (told from the point of view of a television) - but Faust has incredible talent and makes it work.

I love this book, though.