Bane of Nightmares

The Dream Lords #3

by Adrian Cole

The third and final volume in the series, which also includes "A Plague of Nightmares" and "Lord of Nightmares."

Genres: Sword and Sorcery

208 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Adrian Cole was born in Plymouth, Devonshire in 1949. He is currently the Director of College Resources in a large secondary school in Bideford, where he now lives with his wife, Judy, son Sam, and daughter Katia. He remains best known for his Dream Lords trilogy as well as his young adult novels, Moorstones and The Sleep of Giants.

Reviews

[Little Timmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good SiFi series that has a strong fantasy feel to it. Very recommended

[Derek · Rating 2 out of 5]

For each book in the series, Cole appears to regroup and redeploy. This one returns to the off-kilter mood of the first. The writing reminds me of Barrington J Bayley, whose stories are all loosely-constructed and don't stand up to rigorous analysis. It makes the story all the more dreamlike and disconnected and difficult to quantify. The setting is a soup of technology and extraplanar entities (I think, it's hard to say what existence "Shaitan" or the "Four Horsemen" have) and mustache-twirling ridiculous villains and mental-powers-when-plot-convenient and threadbare illusions laid over an inhospitable planet but illusions that render the environments livable in some undefinable way.

Its use of imagery is more consistent and more effective: dwindling high technology squatting in a crudely-built, rotting edifice, clothed in glittering illusion for the benefit of unaware inhabitants.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

The third book in this wonderful heroic fantasy trilogy.