The Keep of Ages: The Vault of Dreamers, Volume 3

By starrymag | October 15, 2017

By: Arlene Allen

 

I don’t normally jump into a series with a third and final volume, but in this case it happened and I’m really glad that I did.  It didn’t take long to get hooked on this tale about Rosie, a troubled hot-headed young woman whose creativity and dreams are being mined for the villainous Berg, primarily for what has now become corporate greed.

 

Yes, there is definitely political commentary here; it’s rather hard for there not to be any in a novel set in a dystopian future.  As readers of the series already know, The Vault of Ages takes place in a not too distant future.  Rosie Sinclair is an angry teenager with many good reasons. Her father is missing and has long been presumed dead. Her mother has remarried and her stepfather Larry is verbally and physically abusive. The family is a far cry from wealthy; they live in a box car in a desert. Rosie’s first mission in life is to protect her beloved little sister Dubbs.

 

Rosie gets accepted into The Forge School, which will nurture her artistic gifts as well as other things more sinister. Rosie is not as thrilled as she should be and who could blame her? Her parents turned over their parental rights to the school’s Dean, Sandy Berg. It turns out The Forge School is also a TV show – millions of viewers tune into the school and its students who are monitored 24/7. There’s a scramble (as there always is) to be popular, but at The Forge things are even more cutthroat. Think “Riverdale” on acid. Unpopular students who don’t make “the 50” top of the charts are booted from the school. Rosie claws her way to the top, using whatever means she can, taking great risks and pissing off a lot of people, including Berg.

 

If that isn’t bad enough, Berg is “mining” students’ dreams. He is allegedly using them to find cures for deadly brain diseases, including his own Huntington’s chorea.  It sounds a tad altruistic but it isn’t.  Enter the corporate greed.  Fister Pharmaceuticals (and this name can’t be coincidental) is making a fortune on the drugs that keep the kids at The Forge pretty much stoned to lower their resistance to what is being done to them and the drugs that keep them asleep for twelve hours a day so their dreams can be mined. When Rosie finds out, she is more than furious and immediately starts planning her breakout and means to show the world the shocking truth about the Forge.

 

Rosie is assisted on the way by computer geek Burnham, who happens to be a scion of the powerful Fister family.  One is never quite sure if he’s a good guy or bad; he seems honest and helpful, but he’s a Fister. She also befriends a cook in The Forge School’s kitchen, a young man named Linus, who is miserably treated by his boss (insert more socio-political commentary).  His boss beats him, resulting in Linus losing an eye.

 

Poor Linus’s troubles don’t end there; Berg ends up replacing his eye with a camera.  Berg is monitoring Rosie’s every move, including intimate ones, through Linus’s camera eye. This pretty much destroys their growing relationship; words are exchanged on both sides and both are left heartbroken.

 

Rosie holes up with Burnham for a while and helping another young woman named Thea.  Induced into one of Berg’s sleeps and injected with Rosie’s memories, Thea wakes up with part of Rosie’s consciousness – and discovers she is pregnant.  After Thea safely delivers, Rosie takes off for home where she hopes her family will believe her tale and aid her in her quest to take down Berg. It is at this point that Volume Three, The Keep of Ages begins.

 

Rosie arrives home only to find her family missing, all of them including her little sister Dubbs.  The only clue she can find is a mysterious note from Dubbs, which she doesn’t get much time to read before having to deal with Ian, one of Berg’s minions. Ian is a loser of a boy who salaciously harbors a crush on Rosie. With the help of a neighbor, Ian is subdued and Rosie takes off on a trek that leads to California and sinister amusement park called The Grisly (no subtlety) Valley Theme Park.  It’s based on old horror tropes (you couldn’t pay me to go there). The park is closed, shut down after a nuclear power plant meltdown left it in a radiation zone. There are grim rumors about the place as well, rumors of a vast underground of Dreamers being mined illegally for their consciousness and dreams.

 

Rosie’s one clue from Dubbs leads her to Lavinia, a lonely old woman who was the original founder of The Forge School. She sincerely thought her idea for the school was a good one, showing the world what the best and brightest students looked like.  She had no idea of what Dean Berg did when she left and had no idea what he was doing to students and their dreams.  Lavinia lost her daughter and grandchild to the radiation poisoning in Grisly Valley. She also had design part of the security for the theme park and teaches Rosie the way to break in, to verify or deny the rumors of a vault of dreamers kept below ground. Additionally, she gives Rosie video cameras to plant around various areas of the park.

 

Rosie manages to get into the creepy old park. Berg has played a stage trick on Rosie (or has he?) by displaying Dubbs on the top of the haunted castle in the claws of a massive dragon. Rosie rushes right in though, knowing Dubbs is there and in danger. Sure enough she finds the vault, but there’s more going on than she even imagined.  “Nearly dead” people are being mined for their remaining bits of consciousness and their last dreams.  Rosie manages to find Dubbs and escape, but not without cost. Something awakens in Rosie’s brain, something that wasn’t there before.

 

She and Dubbs hide out in Lavinia’s old abandoned home on Grisly Beach.  She is surprisingly joined by Linus, who has seen an ophthalmologist about his eye and has a lens cap placed on the camera within (I’m not going into detail on the eye stuff.  Eyes are too squishy and grody.  Massive yuck). Even after their fight, Linus still has feelings for Rosie (obviously; hence the eye surgery).  He finds her trail through Lavinia and they have a blissful but brief reunion.  Rosie’s mom is still missing (trust me, she doesn’t care about Larry) and the only lead is in Grisly Valley Theme Park.  Rosie knows she must go back in, to save Ma and free the dreamers. Aided by Linus, Burnham and Thea, as well as the “thing” inside her head that calls itself “Arself” (more commentary), Rosie goes back into the worst nightmare she’s encountered yet.

 

This is one exciting and exhilarating thrill ride of a book, a wonderful ending to a different kind of YA dystopian fiction.  One of the things I like best is the characterizations; no one is a mere cardboard cutout. Rosie is justified in her anger. She’s angry at her parents and she has reason to be. Her affection for her younger sister is warm and genuine. Yes, Rosie is hot-headed and fierce, but she needs to be. She is also uncommonly kind and generous, giving people second and third chances when others would have walked away. She risks her life for others.  Burnham and Thea are complex and I wasn’t sure I could really trust them until the very end. Berg is just a villain; one does have a shred of sympathy for his suffering from such a horrible disease. He may even have been altruistic at some point before being corrupted by power and greed.

 

I like Lavinia too; I’m glad not all of the adults in the book are portrayed as bad guys or even just clueless, like Rosie’s mom. Lavinia is smart and she wanted others to be educated. She isn’t afraid of technology and keeps abreast of new developments.

 

Linus and the love story I had a bit of a problem buying into, mainly because the books are just one massive adventure that leaves little room for a well-developed romance.  Hopefully, they will get to know each other better after the book’s end. I hope they get a happily ever after.

 

The book is well written, gripping and attention grabbing – as I mentioned I was hooked within the first several pages and had to go back and find the first two books. Things are sinister and that amusement park was bone-chilling from its inception, a monument to the darkness and the hold horror stories have on us. The socio-political commentary, which any good dystopian novel should have, is very timely as well as being spot-on. I highly recommend this trilogy and check into author Caragh M. O’Brien’s other series as well.