Product Description

Lee Thomas burst onto the literary scene with his Bram Stoker Award-winning first novel, Stained. Now, the promise of that remarkable debut has come to fruition with this compulsively readable tale of past sin and present-day redemption.

History is dust, he reminded himself. No matter how thoroughly you wipe it away, it always returns to settle. Past and present were coming together. That which had passed, that which should have been dead. The dust had returned. Welcome back . . . to Wonderland.

Ken Nicholson never saw himself returning to New Orleans, but the attack on his college-age son has drawn him. Not just to his home and to his family, but to the mistakes of his own tortured life. Divorced and now fully admitting to his homosexuality, Ken must now confront an evil he thought was long buried. A killer has taken his son and has threatened to take even more: his ex-wife, his former lover, and the very notion of his past. Years ago, the mysterious owner of a club named Wonderland claimed Ken as his own, only to die in violent fashion. Today, a killer knows far too much about that tragic night at Wonderland, leaving Ken desperate for answers, desperate to stay alive.

With its unsettling sense of menace, The Dust of Wonderland will seduce you with its Southern charms as it frightens you to your core.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #683551 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Stoker-winner Thomas (Stained) delivers an intermittently eloquent supernatural tale reminiscent of Peter Straub's Ghost Story. Kenneth Nicholson returns to New Orleans when a late-night call from his ex-wife breaks the tragic news that their son, Bobby, is in a coma, after being bludgeoned by an unknown assailant. As he waits for encouraging medical news, Nicholson gets visions that suggest the possible return of an old evil that was responsible for several gory deaths at a gay lounge popularly referred to as Wonderland. The operator of that club, Nicholson's lover Travis Brugier, was believed dead, but Nicholson begins to wonder if his spirit has resurfaced, possibly in the form of Bobby's attractive girlfriend, Vicki Bach. Thomas's writing is somewhat erratic but often quite good, offering further promise that Thomas could emerge as a leading voice of modern horror. (Aug.)
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About the Author
Lee Thomas has had stories published in the anthologies A Walk on the Darkside , The Book of Final Flesh and Inferno. His first novel, Stained won the Bram Stoker Award. Visit leethomasauthor.com.

Customer Reviews

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.

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.

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.