Newman Riplan is a Bohemian British troubleshooter dreaming of a dandy life while whoring and getting wasted in Amsterdam with a couple of friends. He never went on vacation and the trip to Amsterdam is just a business one and it’s only by chance that he meets there his old friends. After a night of debauchery, his friends put him on a plane, destination unknown. And that’s when the impossible happens, and for some reason, Ripley seems to travel into another dimension, where nothing is like it should be. He struggles to return to his on ‘place’. This other place is inhabited by humans, but not all them are what they seem to be, and from then on its a page-turner. That said, I must admit I wasn’t surprised by the finale, which I expected as soon as Newman meets the Alchemist.
An Other Place by Darren Dash is a surreal story taking place in a world where nothing seems to make sense according to our reality standards, but it makes perfect sense in the other another place. Every time Newman asks a question the answer is not what he would expect and in this place without a name, where there’s no glass, he meets all sorts of weird people, from wild animals to sandmen, lycans, drones, wolfers, and enemaists. Intriguing people with sometimes odd jobs a world that would either captivate you or annoy you for its strangeness. And until the end, the reader doesn’t know if this other place is just another dimension or something like an afterlife.
I did find the main character quite annoying at the beginning of the story. However, once he’s trapped in this other place, struggling to escape what he considers a prison, I couldn’t help but feeling sorry for him. That however changed again when Newman shows again his real nature of self-centred dandy never considering the consequences of his actions. And they’re mind blowing.
Reviewed for Readers' Favorite
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