Knife of Dreams – Book Review

Knife of Dreams, Robert Jordan’s eleventh book in his Wheel of Time series, explores Morpheus being imprisoned by Randall Burgess for centuries. Burgess holds all of the power symbols belonging to dreamland such as Helm, Ruby and Pouch of Sand which grant gods their powers, using these to control our world through abuse or cruelty; unfortunately however, his abuse and cruelty has an adverse impact as people begin getting sick in waking life or enter permanent sleep cycles as a result of his misuse.

Morpheus comes close to breaking free on numerous occasions, but is ultimately unable to. Instead, he remains trapped for generations while his son Alex grows up resentful of him and grows increasingly bitter towards him as an individual. Alex himself is a complex character who exhibits both empathy and cowardice that will ultimately bring about his demise.

Musically, this album begins with a sinister-sounding bell that rings repeatedly, followed by genre variations like ragtime on “Take Away My Pain”, one of drummer Mike Portnoy’s ways of dealing with his mother’s death; Morse code messages appear on some tracks such as “In the Name of God”, translating to guitar riffs as “Eat my ass and balls!”