The Vault of Dreamers

The Vault of Dreamers

2014 • 418 pages

Ratings6

Average rating2.8

15

Interesting concept. A school of the arts that is also a ‘Truman Show' for the students who are watched and ranked by their viewers 12 hours a day. The other 12 hours are spent in a school-mandated, drug-induced sleep. Theoretically the required sleep is to stimulate creativity in the students, but one of the students suspects there are other reasons and decides to stop taking her sleeping pill to find out what really goes on at night.

I liked the idea of what happens to a person with no alone time. 12 hours on constant camera and 12 hours in a comatose state. How does it affect you if none of your time is your own? But, I think I was hoping for a different sort of story. It took a strange, not totally unwelcome turn, but it was too underdeveloped to really work. And then, abruptly, it was over. I'm not philosophically opposed to open endings, but this one fell flat.

October 13, 2014Report this review