ANDREIGO AND THE WEAVER OF DREAMS

Debut author Ellington sets his YA fantasy in an idyllic but secretive town called Willow Crest.

Adolescent Andreigo Nova enters an elite school in his hometown with new, adventure-seeking friends. He also learns that his lucid dreaming marks him as inheritor of great spiritual power that can balance the opposing forces of dreams and malicious nightmares. He’s a bookish high school student who loves reading heroic fantasy. His extremely vivid waking dreams, reminiscent of the adventures in some of his favorite novels, sometimes cause him to faint. In his phantasms, he faces perils and deadly fights against both real and mythical beasts. Brash Australian exchange student Ahnu, a new arrival in town, befriends Andreigo and his pal Lillian. Despite his outgoing, athletic “Crocodile Dundee” persona, the Aussie, it turns out, also relishes fantasy novels. The trio instantly bonds and vows to solve local mysteries. Conveniently, one epic mystery arises. A shadowy secret society called the Nocturnal Order, possibly responsible for at least one disappearance, has left clues of the group’s surreptitious activities all over Willow Crest. Part of the trail leads to Whimsly Academy, the highly rated high school into which the three friends have just been accepted. When not finding lost manuscripts or penetrating chambers of secrets in libraries, Andreigo suffers more bizarre dream episodes. The dreams occur at all times, drawing the attention of his fellow students. It turns out the boy is indeed a chosen one who’s involved in the culmination of a long battle between two sets of elemental entities who spawn and control either dreams or nightmares. The Nocturnal Order is obsessed with finding and resurrecting the power-hungry, long-banished wraith/spirit/sandman called Insomneohs, aka “Bringer of Nightmares.” The creature once used insidious sorcery to tip the delicate balance between the two sides and tried to control not only the dreamscapes, but the material world. Andreigo’s domineering, alcoholic stepfather, Charles, also has deep ties to the Nocturnal Order. Lately, Charles has been even more unpleasant than usual toward Andreigo and his mother. Can Andreigo, with a little help from friends and allies, overcome such forces of malice?

There’s a clear Harry Potter vibe to this short volume—complete with a totemic owl and faculty who sport twee names like Mrs. Flumble, the foreign languages teacher, and Mr. Tofflebean, the “physical enrichment” coach—but it’s not a strict carbon copy. Ellington inventively explores the provenance of dreams and nightmares (“He read about legends of people who could manipulate the dreamscape, to shape it, use it as a tool to reunite souls, if only for a fleeting moment whilst sleeping”). And, unlike J.K. Rowling’s work, the fairly straightforward route to a confrontation with Insomneohsian wickedness doesn’t burden readers with multiple volumes of elaborate ruses or labyrinthine feints to keep them guessing about who’s on the side of villainy or virtue (though a standard-issue jockish bully does ends up in a slightly unexpected positive light). The door remains very much ajar for sequels in the end.

A dream-driven Hogwarts-esque fantasy that’s original enough to satisfy.