The Dust of Wonderland (ISBN 1593500114)

Terrifying tale of obsession and control:
News that his son was the victim of a brutal assault brings Ken Nicholson back to New Orleans, where he spent most of his young adulthood, and the city where he "came out" to his (now ex) wife and family, who still live there. From the voices in his head, Ken soon suspects that the attack on his son was premeditated to make him return, part of the plan of the sinister and mysterious Travis Brugier, the owner of a unique French Quarter gay brothel that served the city's powerful and elite, where Ken worked for a time. But Ken had seen Travis die, right in front of him, so many years ago. Can this really be him back from the dead, are the voices some kind of sick joke or plot, or is he just going crazy? It's a life-and-death dilemma that Ken needs to solve, before his ex-wife, surviving daughter, and former lover become its next victims. I'm not really a usual reader of the "horror" genre of gay novels, but this unique "horror-mystery" came highly recommended, and I enjoyed it a great deal. Classically well-written and suspensefully crafted by a talented author, it provides the perfect mixture of page-turning thrills and pure entertainment. I give it five stars out of five.

Travis of Old Evil:
Travis has a hold on Ken, a hold not even death could break. It's almost as though he didn't die at all, but his evil lives on, and it seems to speak to Kenn out of the mouth of a woman now that Travis of old evil has died. I have read hundreds of horror novels in my life, but never one that spoke so clearly about an agonizing dilemma: And the book really rubs your face in it, What would *you* do if an ageless, deathless evil made you choose between an ex-wife Paula, whom you had walked out on once years before, and your two children, a boy and a girl? And on the other half of the giant Libra scales, was balanced the life of the man you loved passionately, body and soul, for yes, it had come out that you were gay and that is why you had left Paula, and initially, the reason who Travis the clubowner had been able to seduce you, by arousing your basic nature? Now the ultimate Sophie's choice--which would you let die, your children or your boyfriend? Once you realize the trap Ken Nicholson is in, you won't be tempted to tell him that all of this is his fault; you'll be rather more sympathetic, for who knew that beyond Travis' suave, sophisticated good looks lay the loathsome face of an evil beyond category? Lee Thomas makes the relationships understandable, except between Travis and Vicki. Is Vicki a real person, or just another face of the old evil Travis? She speaks and looks like a woman (although she doesn't act like one). She tempts Ken into betraying his family on the one hand, and poor misunderstood David on the other. David and Ken share some sexy love scenes that are undeniably vivid and arousing, but yet would you give up your only surviving daughter for the love of this man? What would *you* do, reader? Answer that question and then see what Ken Nicholson does on his return to a shadowy, dangerfilled New Orleans, the city that care forgot but horror remembered.

So poorly written and plotted that I couldn't finish the book. Strongly not recommended:
Ken Nicholson returns to New Orleans after his son is hospitalized and encounters all of the mistakes and mysteries of his past. Years ago, he lived in a strange club called Wonderland which closed after the tragic events of a single night; now, its influences return to haunt Ken and threaten his family. This is, for me, an unusual review: I am reviewing the book without finishing it. I found The Dust of Wonderland so bad, with poor writing and ill-paced plot, that I was unable to finish it. As other reviews are uniformly positive, I feel obligated to provide a negative review to warn readers: some people may not enjoy this book or impossible to read. I don't recommend it. Since I didn't finish this book, I can't properly critique it as a whole. Perhaps it contains carefully developed themes or characters that can only be appreciated over the course of the entire novel. What I do know, however, is the book's writing style: it is poorly written, rife with italicized flashbacks and thoughts, fragmented sentences, and passive voice. The flashbacks and Ken's thoughts serve to give the reader a peek into Ken's dark past and his terrified emotions, but they are amateur attempts which destroy the story's flow. Why Thomas uses fragmented sentences and passive voice, I'm not sure; they only serve to make it an effort to slog through each poorly written page, and they make the plot feel random and undirected. The plot is similarly ill-written: the premise of a haunted past is interesting, but Thomas destroys his plot even as he builds it. Flashbacks give up too much information about the past and steal time from the present so that the current plotline seems to go nowhere. Moments of extreme violence, some of which are only hallucinations, begin so early and occur so frequently that they lose their impact. Ken is a passive protagonist (especially when narrated in passive voice), blundering into plot points and victim to his situation, and the reader quickly loses interest in--and track of--his story. As evidenced by other reviews, some readers enjoy and appreciate The Dust of Wonderland. I don't hold it against them, but I also don't know what they see. Personally, I found this book disappointing and, more importantly, unreadable. I made it halfway through, but the writing style made it too painful to continue and, without any attachment to Ken or interest in his story, the plot gave me no reason to try. Therefore, I strongly recommend the reader against The Dust of Wonderland--this book is not as good as other reviews make it out to be.

New Orleans Supernaturally:
Thomas, Lee. "The Dust of Wonderland", Alyson, 2007. New Orleans Supernaturally Amos Lassen and Literary Pride Whenever I hear that a book has been written about my hometown, I rush to read it. Many times I find myself disappointed but Lee Thomas in "The Dust of Wonderland" proved to me that the dark and gothic side of the city still is there and he writes about it beautifully. Thomas has a way with words and he reminds me that New Orleans has had a great literary tradition which he upholds. His control of the English language is masterful and he gives us a rich picture of New Orleans with vivid portraits and deep characterizations. Only someone who has lived in the Big Easy can do that city justice. "The Dust in Wonderland" is an incredibly well written story of a man in conflict who, upon the death of his son, returns to his family from whom he has been estranged and to his former lover. His college-aged son died mysteriously and the city of New Orleans has drawn Ken Nicholson back--not just to the city but to his home, to his family and to the mistakes he has made in life. Upon discovering that he was gay, he and his wife divorced but now he must face an evil that he thought was long gone. Years prior Ken had entered a world of seduction and addiction at a club named Wonderland. Travis Brugier (such a New Orleans name) had initiated him into this world which has left him psychologically damaged after the demise of the club. Now when things had begun to seem better a killer has found him and has caused more pain and threatens to hurt him even more by taking Ken's ex-wife, his former lover and Ken's very own being. When Ken tries to convince the police that danger is both real and nigh, they do not react. It seems that only Ken and the killer know the truth. As Ken tries to win back his own soul, Lee Thomas gives us a novel of sheer beauty. The book will break your heart and scare you like you have never been scared before. It is a twisted tale and follows none of the other conventions f the genre of supernatural fiction. The surprises and the suspense come fast as Thomas throws stereotype after stereotype to the wind and we get a truly dark story. The With complex characters and beautiful prose and the most evil of villains in Travis Brugier, here is a book that you cannot put down, Here is a book that is both poetic and provocative, eloquent and supernatural and will keep you awake for hours. The villains are the most evil and those that suffer at their hands do so to reclaim their own humanity. I am still reeling from having read this book and you will undoubtedly feel the same.

Horror and the Human Condition:
The past's influence on the present is an enduring theme in literature and the arts in general. For some, the past is a lifeline that helps them make it through the challenges of the present and onward toward the promise of a future. For others, like the protagonist in Lee Thomas' "The Dust of Wonderland", memory is a disease that infects the present and threatens the very concept of a future. In his stellar third novel, Thomas personifies the memories of the past in the images of dust: "Always there, history, like dust, frosted the present. It could be wiped away, scrubbed, and for a long time forgotten, but it always returned, settling on life's ornamentation. If left unchecked it grew thick and opaque, covering all that might be with the filth of what had already come to pass." Ken Nicholson is a man running from his memories, haunted by the events of the past during which questioned sexuality and the hedonistic pursuits of youth combined to lure him into the web of a seductive club called Wonderland and the seemingly unending clutches of its proprietor, the enigmatic Travis Brugier. Years after Wonderland and its owner came to a violent end, Nicholson fled his New Orleans home, plagued by terrifying hallucinations that play out like waking nightmares. But despite the physical distance he puts between himself and his nagging past, he is summoned home by his ex-wife when his son is viciously attacked. "Dust" tells the story of Nicholson's homecoming during which he must confront the mistakes of his past while doing battle with a cunning evil he thought long dead in order to protect his loved one's and his own sanity. Thomas fashions a classic ghost story, with enough twists and turns to qualify "Dust" as part mystery, and strong characterizations that power the narrative forward like a solid psychological thriller. It's often tricky business when writers blend genres, but Thomas pulls off his ambitious narrative undertaking so well here that the lines between supernatural ghost story, psychological drama, and suspense thriller are marvelously blurred - ultimately creating a wholly satisfying reading experience. He sets his story against the richly atmospheric backdrop of New Orleans - overplayed and clichéd in the hands of lesser writers - in which the fabled French Quarter and the bars of Bourbon Street come alive as secondary characters yet never overshadow. Not since Christopher Rice's gothic gay coming-of-age tale, "A Density of Souls", has a novel so seamlessly integrated the New Orleans mystique or so perfectly captured the dichotomous melancholy and pure, hedonistic charisma of the region. The key strength in "Dust" is the author's masterful use of characterization to create layers of internal and external conflicts for his players, at once humanizing them and investing the reader in their struggles. Nicholson, in particular, is a marvelously flawed creation, the embodiment of an entire generation of gay men for whom Stonewall came too late to save them from having to travel the heterosexual highway before realizing that they had missed their homosexual exit. In Nicholson, readers are made acutely aware of his struggle toward self-acceptance and how real and very difficult that struggle to reconcile the divergent aspects of family, friends, and faith can be. Nowhere in "Dust" is this recurring idea of the sheer messiness of the human condition more brilliantly captured than in the scene in which Nicholson stumbles upon the cathedral in which his severely injured son was to have been married: "After several minutes of uncertainty, looking into the vast and ornate temple, Ken left the church. He was being foolish, ridiculous, and desperate. He felt weak and hated himself for it. How many of his friends had he watched in their last moments of life, friends who had despised the intolerant religions of their birth, turn back to inefficient faiths? People needed their gods, he knew, and Ken wished he had found one to believe in so his prayers wouldn't feel like the ramblings of a hypocrite, but he wasn't going to indulge in foxhole Christianity. Not yet. Such a turn would mean all other hope was lost." Thomas is one of a newer crop of horror writers whose writing clearly seeks to transcend the limits of a genre frequently dismissed as disposable and criticized for its excessive indulgences in violence and bloodshed that (sadly) often forsake narrative structure, mood and nuance. Thomas' rich prose harkens back to the moodier works of Straub's "Shadowland" or King's "Dolores Claiborne", while reflecting this newer and welcome trend toward literary horror from the likes of newcomers like Sarah Langan and Alexandra Sokoloff. Thomas demonstrates time and again throughout "Dust" that true horror need not be visceral to get under one's skin: "How long he stood in front of the gate to Wonderland Ken couldn't say, but he found himself terrified by the place. Like a wasp's nest, this structure and its grounds had served as a shelter for vicious and poisonous things. History and the disease of memory emanated from the decimated structure. Windows, filthy and dark, played the films of history; they showed a magnificent courtyard and bubbling fountain, and they harbored a unique master with incomprehensible power. Ken remembered numerous wonders, numerous pleasures and a single atrocity in which four children had battled for their lives. A soft bed spoke words of confused sensuality. Hallways led visitors through priceless ornamentation. Wandering these halls were the ghosts of children who were lost in their pursuit of happiness as they served their benefactor. All was brilliant light. All was unfathomable darkness. All was fractured light. All was a story." And, like the best supernatural horror writers, Thomas ably conveys the paranormal without getting bogged down in over-explanation or talking down to his audience. In getting across the essence of the horrifying mind control games that plague the central characters, Thomas conveys this rather abstract concept through simple dialogue between the characters. When one character likens their psychic torture to being caught in "...a virtual reality game without an Off switch" the audience understands it. At the core of all great stories is the human condition and our endless attempts to quantify, qualify, and question it. In "The Dust of Wonderland", Thomas explores that totality of the human experience like a master painter, first with broad strokes to color the palate then with a fine-point brush to bring forth the depth and detail. While dodging the literary snowballs that Thomas skillfully laces with the genuine chills of an old-fashioned ghost story and hurls liberally throughout, readers will be ensnared in the intricate web of humanity he casts out over his characters, caught blissfully unaware by this dazzling portrait of human hope and heartbreak.