Beneath Ceaseless Skies #452, March 5, 2026

“Where the Dream Train Goes, Pt. I” by Jason Sanford

“Where the Dream Train Goes, Pt. II” by Jason Sanford

“The Book Collectors” by J.W. Halicks

Reviewed by Axylus

This issue features a novella split into two parts: “Where the Dream Train Goes, Pt. I” and “Where the Dream Train Goes, Pt. II” by Jason Sanford. I’d like to start off this full-throated praise of the novella by saying that I was tempted to give it three out of three stars, but relented. And a personal note: though some readers of Tangent Online may characterize me as a foe of LGBTQ characters based on my unwavering rejection—written in granite, immutable, non-negotiable—of a certain story in another publication (after which I refused to review that publication again), I say here that a hinted-at lesbian relationship, or potential lesbian relationship, was left undeveloped in this tale, to the fatal detriment of its emotional texture. I rather passionately hate agitprop and smut, considering them things that do not deserve a moment’s attention, but romantic relationships that serve the characters’ deepest motivations are more than OK with me. That holds true for LGBTQ bonds. So I suggest to Jason Sanford, if he expands this to book form: skip the cheap-n-easy sex bit that other authors reach for by self-serving reflex, the parts that cynical opportunists sell and justify by saying they are rendering fiction that is true to life. Go straight to the heart of the matter: the feeling of being different that the protagonist had because she was dream-touched, mountain-touched, and the empty ache inside of each of us, the longing to be paired with someone who knows our greatest pain and reorients its biting margins, mending the raveled edges of our souls. In the eternal song of “I’m alive” that we sing to the universe each day, we all want someone to reply, “I see you. I value you.” And that’s notably missing here. As a bonus, the contrast between the natures of the two girls (young women?) could have made for intriguing interpersonal dynamics. Meaty stuff, that.

Oops, I forgot a summary: Lande is a girl who is mountain-touched. In her world there is a mountain whose stones are crystallized dreams of the native population. A few, like Lande, are especially sensitive to the dreams encapsulated in stone, and tiptoe perilously on the edge of dream and reality. Alas, there are Outrangers from offworld who mine those stones and sell them as mere trinkets, colonizing and exploiting the natives to profit mercilessly from their dreams. And what do exploited native populations always do in fiction (and often do in real life)? They rise up, eventually, if they can. Lande has been pushed by the mystical power of the mountain to collaborate with her masters. Why? She must deal with Boss Steiger and Master Dodds, who have different levels and types of power over her. Moreover, her best friend Avy, who worked for the rebellion, has been enslaved by the colonizers and set to work mining dream stones, a job which drives people insane. The will of Master Dodds, who is much more than he seems, hovers over all things. In all things, however, the mountain has a cryptic will of its own.

This novella suffers from compression of events in its rushed ending, from a woefully underdeveloped central relationship (see above), and from a dearth of otherworldly dreamworld sequences in a story built around dreams. But other than that, it rocks. Strongly recommended.

At over 7k words, “The Book Collectors” by J.W. Halicks is either an impetuously short novelette or an especially long short story, depending on your perspective. Let’s call it the latter. Bishop and Bright collect books for a university archive. They are sent to retrieve “…The Book of Lost Chances, which held eyewitness accounts of historical battles that had come to ruin” from a horde of mechanical beings who had overthrown their wizard master and now obsessively collect things (everything, it seems) from a “vast, interconnected series of separate universes.” Bright is a young orphan who has an interesting backstory, but the backstory is bolted on to an otherwise standard tale.