Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep

Launched on June 30th of this year, Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep is the latest novel by Paul Tremblay. This is the same author who brought us Horror Movie and The Cabin at the End of the World.

The story revolves around two main characters. One is a young woman named Julia. She’s still trying to find her place in the world when her mother offers her a job. She’s going to be testing new technology that can animate and control a dead body.

The dead body in question isn’t really dead, though. It’s a middle-aged man who recently had a stroke, thus making him the perfect test subject for the new tech. Her mission is simple: get the man to his home state. This will test the tech, and send him home to finish dying in peace.

Of course, Julia has many questions. For starters, how does she know that the man is even really dead? And if she does manage to prove that this revolutionary tech works, what will that mean for mankind?

Oh, and the other main character? Well, it’s you. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

The first thing we have to talk about is Julia. She is, and I don’t say this lightly, lovable. She’s sweet, considerate, empathetic. I love her constant quoting of The Big Lebowski, a movie that is at least a decade older than her.

I love that Julia truly cares about the man she’s in charge of controlling. Not as a project but as a person. It makes her endearing. It makes you want to root for her, over and over again. This is not something often found in horror content, but I really loved it.

Throughout the book, you’ll find that there are many pages that don’t exactly conform to normal page expectations. Things like putting text in squares, using wildly different font sizes, and even including faded text behind other, more prominent text.

These things worked to give a decisive atmosphere. And they honestly added to the creepy value. You had to ask yourself, who was speaking? Whose point of view are we hearing right now? Are they a reliable narrator, or not?

I love a book that makes me paranoid.

Now, I have a quick aside. On my other site, I write a series called Why It Works. This is a collection of book reviews framed to give advice to writers. If I were writing about this book, I would advise writers not to do this sort of thing just because Paul Tremblay did it. If you honestly think your story would benefit from it, then do it! Otherwise, it just feels like a gimmick. And that cheapens your writing.

Fun with page layouts and fonts weren’t the unique decisions that Tremblay used. Several times through the book, he felt the need to have a little aside with the reader. You know, about the book you’re currently reading.

I kind of loved that. Like, as a writer myself, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to just stop in the middle of a book and start giving a preposition. If I did it, though, it would probably not work as well.

These little asides seemed very funny at first. Looking back, they are creepy as hell in a way that isn’t going to make the least bit of sense until you get closer to the end of the story.

Finally, I want to point out that this book had a lot of heart. At least, from everyone but the antagonists.

The people in Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep seem to genuinely care about other people. Julia’s Uncle Fun, her best friend, and several other characters I can’t name without spoiling something. These are good people who care about other people and want to do the right thing. Again, we don’t always get that with horror content.

It was nice.

All that being said, this wasn’t a perfect book. For one thing, there are several characters introduced that don’t really go anywhere. They have their scene, and Tremblay goes into a good amount of work to flesh them out. And then we don’t see them again.

Maybe it was meant to be misdirection. To me, it felt like a waste of time and pages.

I also felt like some of the coincidences didn’t add up. There’s a person that Julia meets later in the book that she eventually trusts because they have physical proof that they know someone in common.

Yes, I’m being vague on purpose.

This interaction felt too coincidental to me. It felt contrived.

Overall though, these issues were minimal. Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep was a fantastic book. It was dark, heartwarming, and endlessly entertaining.

Looking for more dark reads? Check out my review of The Reformatory.