The Dreaming v.3 by Queenie Chan – 192 pages

The Dreaming v.3 by Queenie Chan – 192 pages

All secrets are revealed in the last volume of The Dreaming.  Twins Jeanie and Amber break into the school’s sealed room to find a tableau that had been haunting their dreams.  Vice-principal Mrs. Skeener recounts the fate of her and her sister decades ago, told in the series of paintings hung like clues around the building.  The author ties in some aboriginal myth as well to the story.  The result is a complete, yet bittersweet ending as Jeanie goes on to narrate what happens in the years after the mystery is over. 

The Dreaming v.2 by Queenie Chan – 192 pages

The Dreaming v.2 by Queenie Chan – 192 pages

Following the discovery of the body of the latest girl to disappear, classes at Greenwich Private College are suspended.  Many students leave, and the ones who remain are virtually cut off from the world.  Their isolation intensifies as rain pours down for days.  While Amber is virtually bedridden with nightmares, her twin Jeanie investigates the dark history of disappearances over the decades, finding an unexpected ally in a teacher.  Although there is a pacing problem at one point – sitting down for a long talk while a band of ghostly disappeared students appears outside and infiltrates the locked school – the middle volume of The Dreaming offers up more Victorian gothic atmosphere where dreams and reality mix, and plenty of dread.  I am looking forward to learning the secret of the disappearances in the last volume.

The Dreaming v.1 by Queenie Chan – 175 pages

The Dreaming v.1  by Queenie Chan – 175 pages

Twins Jeanie and Amber are taken to a remote boarding school in the Australian outback, where their aunt is headmistress.  Though threatened by the harsh vice-principal, they make friends, and learn the school has a mysterious history of students vanishing without a trace.  Jeanie and Amber begin to have eerie dreams, dressed in Victorian clothes amidst trees in the woods.  Dreams and the school’s disturbing history begin to collide when one of their friends vanishes, and they find themselves in the forest that surrounds the school, searching for her.  What this manga lacks in sophistication of character art, it makes up for in very good background artwork, adding to the gothic atmosphere.  The artist’s background of growing up in Australia also gives it a different flavor than other manga.  I like the classic ghost-story feeling of The Dreaming, and am impatient to find out what happens in the two remaining volumes.