Review by Frank Plowright

Perhaps reflecting the title, Dream Warriors opens with a young teenage boy navigating what he believes is a dream. Threats and confusion are inventively presented by artist Berto Santiago, conveying the dangers that eventually end up with the boy being deposited among a group of people on Cloud 9, each of them distinctively clothed.

Jesse Byrd’s not a writer who believes in hanging around, and the opening pages are an energy rush followed by the boy’s rapid induction into the Dream Warriors, and then into a training programme. Called 9956 for a long while, it’s a third of the way through that we eventually learn the protagonist’s name is Mekhi, or preferably Khi. The idea of a kid thrown into a strange new world and readers learning what’s happening alongside them pulls us through a fair way through Dream Warriors, the constantly new experiences hitting one after the other, always vibrantly drawn by Santiago.

It’s Santiago who carries the weight here. His imaginative designs, continual movement and bright colours do a fine job distracting from missing explanations. Khi constantly makes references to dreaming, and is unable to wake up, but it’s a long time before Byrd has him question what he’s going through and just before halfway an explanation of what Cloud 9 is comes unprompted, not because Khi’s curious. Even given a form of dream afterlife one would imagine anyone caught up in Khi’s circumstances might have a few more questions, especially given he might actually now be dead.

What follows continues the pattern of random events without any great foundation, although always interestingly drawn, giving the feel of story construction for a video game rather than reading. Connecting people to feelings over-complicates a story that’s already hard to make sense of, and interludes introducing characters wanting to take over Cloud 9 transmit as another random plot device. Readers really need to know more about what Cloud 9 is and why it matters for a takeover plot to resonate. It sidelines the far stronger idea of Dream Warriors being connected to a particular dreamer.

It’s only over the final third that Byrd slows the plot down enough to give Khi some purpose and supplyfurther explanations as to how things work. It should have happened sooner. There’s also an extremely abrupt and extremely confusing cliffhanger ending, leaving readers with no idea about what’s happening.

Once everything’s revealed, it marks Dream Warriors as conceptually strong with considerable potential, but if there’s a continuation greater efforts are needed in terms of reader accessibility.