To the Dark Tower

by Victor Kelleher

Awake and asleep, Tom has increasingly different lives. Awake he is a climber, scaling the cliffs by Tower Rock, and asleep, he finds himself in a vivid dream-world where he is the carrier, responsible for a strange and beautiful child, and forever in search of the elusive Sleeper. Tom can no longer dismiss his night journeys as "just dreams" once his sleeping and waking lives start to merge. The real-life versions of characters in Tom’s dream-world start to fall into inexplicable, deathlike comas, and Tom realises that his two lives are heading towards an inevitable collision. Tom doesn't know what will happen next, but he is certain of one thing: it's all terrifyingly out of his control.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult

184 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Victor Kelleher is an Australian author. Victor was born in London and moved to Africa with his parents, at the age of fifteen. He spent the next twenty years travelling and studying in Africa, before moving to New Zealand. Kelleher received a teaching degree in Africa and has taught in Africa, New Zealand and Australia. While in New Zealand, he began writing part time, prompted by homesickness for Africa. He moved to Australia in 1976, with his South African wife, Allison, and taught at the University of New England, in Armidale, New South Wales, before moving to Sydney to write full time. Many of the books he has written have been based on his childhood and his travellings in Africa.

Kelleher has won many awards for his books, such as the Australian Children's Book Award.

Reviews

[Derelict Space Sheep · Rating 3 out of 5]

A suitably atmospheric, at times unsettling MG reworking of Robert Browning’s narrative poem ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came’. Engrossing at the outset, the story sags in the middle but redeems itself with a measured, rather downbeat ending to the quest.

[Ami · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book did not go where I expected, but I still enjoyed it. It had an interesting twist at the end for the explanation of what was happening.

[Nev Percy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Came across this dirt cheap secondhand on a charity shelf and was duly intrigued. Totally missed the fact that it is 'Young Adult' -- the category not having the same profile back in 1992, perhaps. But even with a teenage protagonist it wasn't immediately obvious as such for a good many pages. More striking is its originality, with very economic, effective prose, and the lack of specific detail which gives it a mythic, metaphorical or allegorical feel. The dust jacket proclaimed it a 'challenging novel', and by the end of the 184 pp., it certainly eluded any simple 'aha' as to what Kelleher was aiming at.

But maybe it's my knowledge that's lacking. The title is a reference to the complex poem 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came', by Robert Browning, picking up on a line from Shakespeare, which in turn references the Song of Roland, one of Charlemagne's paladins, dating from the mediaeval period. The said teen protagonist 'Tom', proves some way into the book to be 'Tom Roland', so it's not just just a tangential reference. It's possible that English Lit lecturer Kelleher was doing a teen-accessible version of a classic, or more probably I suspect, doing something frightfully literary that only the cognoscenti will get.

Structurally, its chapters alternate between Tom's waking and parallel dreaming existence (the latter, the entire chapters of which are given in italics, eventually being identified as 'The Dream'). If not utterly original, this is still an engaging format, and nicely done. And just one reference to 'dreams within dreams' invites you to question whether the pointedly generic earlyish 20th centuryish industrial setting for the 'waking' world isn't actually a dream -- or nightmare -- itself...

What I think IS original -- and which presumably makes or breaks the book for most people, and for commercial interest -- is the twist. I ticked the box for SPOILERS, and here we go: Tom seems to be on a mission for sweetness and light as The Carrier, of the angelic infant identified as The Sleeper (though there's no suggestion of baby Jesus Christian allegory to this, even when you're alert for it), and then at the end he has to foil his own quest because he realises The Sleeper is in fact not a saviour but a sweet deceiver that is actually a demonic force. Though doubts do occur to Tom at a couple of points in the last quarter of the story, a tale in which you learn in the last ten pages that everything you were previously rooting for was a big lie is not going to sit well with conventional audiences. I get a hint of solipsist philosophy and the Cathar / Manichaean / Gnostic worldview here, and in the dreams within dreams concept, but don't have the knowledge to be able to put my finger on anything more definite than that.

[Kara · Rating 3 out of 5]

So I'm not much for audio books, but I like VK and have wanted to read this book for ages, but for some reason they only ever released it in audiobook format. So points off for that. The narrator was ok I guess, but I'd prefer to read it myself. And it wouldn't have taken so long.
As ever, the unexpected twist just when you think you've got it worked out. VK has been a favourite of mine since I was a kid, and I wish his novels were still in print.

[Nola · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretty weird. Not a satisfying conclusion.

[Monica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Listened this book with my husband on a recent car trip. I would give this book a 3.5 star rating. It held our interest - but was somewhat confusing between the awake time and the dream time. It has suspense, drama, and kind of love.

[Incy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very clever book, and a great example of an untrustworthy first person POV for children