A TRAITOR TO DREAMS - A Book Recommendation

Elpida Kallistos has a secret.

You see, on the outside she is the confident, ultra-competent corporate embodiment of Grrrl power. On the inside however, a gnawing self-doubt is eating her alive. Despite her best efforts to lose herself in her career, the ticking of her biological clock is a constant reminder that she is deep into the wrong side of her thirties (the side that can't help but stare down the double barrels of the big 4 0!) and not only has she no family of her own, she doesn't even have a boyfriend.

Elpida has no children because she has no husband. She has no husband, or boyfriend for that matter, because she can't find a man worth a damn. It's not for lack of trying. As an attractive young woman she has plenty of suitors, many of which she deigns to date but, none of them inspire her to commit to more than a second date before she loses interest in them.

The tale begins with Elpida fleeing one such date through a restaurant's side door. It's a scene that works really well as both comedy and characterization. And as someone who worked in restaurants for twenty years, I found it especially amusing, having twice witnessed distressed damsels similarly escape dates through the kitchen and out the back door.

Ms. Kallistos returns home that night, less than proud for ditching her date in such a manner but, mostly she is upset with herself for her growing feelings of inadequacy which propel her out on dates with men who invariably prove to be 'soft and weak.' Why should I feel less than fulfilled without a boyfriend, husband or children, she asks herself and the universe at large? Why isn't my career enough? Why should I crave affection? I have two loving cats, after all!

Surely, there must be a way to rid oneself of unwanted desires.

No longer wanting to be subject to these nagging feelings, Elpida revs up the nearest search engine and goes trawling the web for a solution. And Lo and Behold! she stumbles across an advert for 'The Dream Trash Can' made by a company out of Silicon Valley called Ideomatic Inc. The product seems to be exactly what she needs. It has plenty of rave reviews but the literature is rather light on how the machine actually works.  She hems and haws at first but Elpida's hard-nosed New York skepticism is ultimately overcome by the company's offer of a free trial of their gizmo.

She hooks herself up to the contraption and tries it out on a small, harmless desire. It seems to work. But how does it work? It bugs her to no end that the company keeps the details close to its chest. The label strictly warning users against opening the device quickly becomes an irresistible challenge. Fetching a screw driver, Elpida decides to play Pandora and pries the lid off the Dream Trash Can.

Instead of unleashing varied ills on the world, Elpida finds herself 'fallen' into an alternate reality peopled with all sorts of strange beings, a great many of them monsters churned out of her own unconscious. It is here the novel's pace reaches pulp speed as our heroine begins her quest for a way home with the aid of a few, equally lost allies, her wits and trusty screwdriver. Along the way she will discover the occult secret at the heart of the alien world, the sinister design of the technology that brought her to it and a few things about herself as well.

A TRAITOR TO DREAMS  is the fun-filled and fast-paced first novel by Alexander Hellene, a new writer to keep an eye out for in the future. Purchase a copy for yourself and see what I mean.




And while you're down amazon's way, check out my own novel,  ONE LAST FLIGHT: Book One of The Holy Terran Empire. It will be available for the low, Howdy Y'all! Introductory Price of Just .99 cents until Easter.