Background
Dr. Eric Johnson began his teaching career in Springfield Massachusetts, and later moved to Ludlow, where he has been educating for two decades in the district. Johnson acquired his master’s in English from the University of Massachusets and a doctorate in educational leadership from The University of Phoenix and has used his skills to teach English to high school students.
While he taught, Johnson had begun a side career as a novelist and has written numerous titles, such as Under the Shadow’s Eye and Depth of the Rebels’ Stone, as a part of a young adult dark fantasy series, a supernatural horror novel The Lost, and two independent poetry books The Conditions We Live and Transitions: A Story in Verse. His books in writing are intended for young adult and new adult audiences.
Johnson’s natural drive for creativity has made him an accomplished writer inspired by his own experiences in life. Information can be found here.
What is a Dreamweaver?
His newest book, Dreamweaver Diaries Unlocked is a pick-your-own-path adventure that sets the main character on escapades through whimsical adventures where the lines between dreams and reality are the reader’s choice to define! A pick-your-own-path narrative is when the reader reads a section of a text and chooses an option from a select few that will alter the plot and affect the main character’s decisions. The choices made will ultimately affect the story’s ending, which encourages the reader to make the right decisions to get a good outcome. This allows the reader to go back and choose different options to read new parts of the story as they finish each ending.
As described in the narrative, a Dreamweaver is someone who can alter dreams in any way they see fit, and this ability is used to shield people’s dreams from nightmares that could cause perishment in their slumber. Johnson got the curious concept from his daughter’s nightmares that plagued her dreams and cleverly convinced her that he could pull a nightmare out of her head and weave a positive dream into her head banishing any negative thoughts that she had. It worked just as well as he thought and the idea was born into a new concept. The art featured in the book is all done by Dall-E’s AI art engine and is credited in the first page credits along with publishing credits.
My Personal Review:
After reading Dreamweaver Diaries Unlocked, I felt the storytelling was whimsical, adventurous, and eventful. The plot follows the main character “You” in a second-person point of view. The story begins after you arrive home from a tiring day of school and immediately need to decompress after a long day’s work. The first choice given to the reader is to either eat dinner or head up to their bedroom and I felt it was quite accurate for me after a long day.
The story leads straight into the foretold dreamworld as soon as the main character heads to their bedroom and falls asleep. From there the choices given unfold to your own personal tale of adventure which I credited as unique and endearing. One of the main plot points is the dreamer becoming the Dreamweaver and having the ability to harness the great power of the night to alter the dream world. Along the dreamer’s quest to harness the great power are paths that take interesting turns featuring monsters, chilling atmospheres, treacherous territories, and strange plot twists.
Each ending has its own appeal depending on the path you take and each ending is neither a good or bad resolution but simply up to the interpretation of the reader. The illustrations in the book, despite being made by an AI, show fascinating little illustrations that go well with the story. The story had chilling suspense, interesting plot development, and was all-around an entertaining read. If you’re looking for an adventurous story with a unique plot then I highly recommend Dreamweaver Diaries Unlocked.
