Dayworld Rebel - Philip José Farmer

**** The return of the daybreaker

I’d appreciated a lot the originality of “Dayworld” and I’d had fun while reading it. Instead, this sequel and second book in the trilogy didn’t totally convinced me, at least not as much as the previous one.

As always, Farmer shows his wild imagination, and his world building is very accurate. Despite being a sequel, because of the change of environment, he had to invent again the places where the story takes place, casting the reader in a dystopian Los Angeles that goes beyond imagination.

Jeff Caird, in fact, leaves Manhattan and with a new identity, in addition to the seven former ones, escapes to the west coast. Everybody is seeking him, because one of his alter egos guards a secret that can overturn the whole system.

The story resumes right from where the first book ended, so it is absolutely necessary to read the latter so that you can understand well the former. I must say that those series in which reading the novels in order is mandatory are my favourite, so this is definitely a good thing.

The protagonist manages once again to be addictive for its fallibility and madness, and the plot is totally unpredictable. You haven’t the faintest idea what awaits the characters on the next page nor you can imagine a possible epilogue to the whole story.

But, unfortunately, I cannot give full marks to this novel, because there are some aspects that I didn’t like.

The plot is riddled with intrigue within intrigues, creating a complexity that I would define sterile. In addition, the distance needed from the structure of the first book forces the author to invent a new one that isn’t as much winning.

Finally, you feel that this is the middle book of a trilogy and therefore it suffers its being a transition story.

At this point I have to get the last one to find out how it ends!

Dayworld Rebel on Amazon.