James Carlson's Reviews > Captain Clive's Dreamworld

Captain Clive's Dreamworld follows an unlucky and haunted protagonist, Deputy Hardy, to the small, seemingly idyllic town of Angels and Hope when he is transferred. Soon after he arrives in the strange town he realizes that nightmares lurk just beneath its perfect facade. He learns that its denizens are perhaps a little more unhinged than your usual small-town folk, their pretenses of goodness and sanity slipping away more and more as he acquaints himself with the new place. Captain Clive's Dreamworld is what happens when we stray too far from the gray area in which we tend to exist and find ourselves entering a darkness from which there is no coming back. In this climate of moral bankruptcy and rampant madness there rises an economy of sin that gives our main character sleepless night after sleepless night. He is desperate to get to the core of it, solve the case, and save the day. Will he fail in his pursuit of justice? Will he conform and become part of the Angels and Hope way of life? Or worse yet, will he be forced to face his own demons?

Jon Bassoff is a master weaver of tales. His delivery is superb, and he knows how to hook the reader and whisk him or her through the story. In the case of Captain Clive's Dreamworld, Bassoff takes so many real-life issues relevant to our world and injects them into the bizarre vein of his work. What's more, he clearly has a very dark and messed-up mind that he shamelessly invites into to explore.

Thanks a lot for adding yet another layer of scar tissue to my already battered psyche, Bassoff. It was a pleasure.