Invasion Of The Dream Wheel

In the year 2204, PharmaGov is secretly putting serum 232, a mind control drug, into every marketable medicine available. This plot is discovered only after 91% of the population has been inoculated. Nevertheless, a revolt forms. Logonus won’t join the revolution because he is enthralled with building the Trance Interface Platform (Dream Wheel). But then Antonio Stravieda, the President/CEO of PharmaGov himself, kills Logonus’ mother. Logonus’ reaction is explosive. He joins the revolution and takes on the rebel’s Bonsai Project to destroy serum 232.
Invasion of the Dream Wheel is classic science fiction that encompasses time travel within a highly adventurous story of rebellion. Meet Acuity Nine, a giant nine tentacle octopus that can out calculate any known computer and that communicates through mental telepathy. There’s chloro-humans whose skins perform photosynthesis as they feed on sunlight, and there’s the Dream Wheel (front cover) capable of sensing past trauma of its passengers and reproducing that traumatic scene upon its deck for all to witness.
We discover why Oksan, a Zen Buddhist monk, would go against all her training to seek revenge? How is it Kevin, of economically depressed Detroit, finally escapes his serum influenced fate? And might Miriam, a girl of 1860s Wales, be able to assist Logonus in his quest while managing to hold her struggling family together?
Watch out, for the Dream Wheel will invade your mind as soon as you open the book.

What are the critics saying?
Gauthier jampacks his story with plot and character details. The 23rd-century storyline proves the most remarkable. Loganus is a green-blooded chlorohuman whose body gets most of its energy from the sun, and his xenobiologist mother lab-created an intelligent, tentacled being that communicates telepathically. This SF outing mixes in a solid historical tale with the recruits’ different eras and passing years. For example, Kevin becomes a Marine fighting in Afghanistan, and Miriam takes a harrowing sea journey to America as the Indian Wars rage. Still, the SF element remains prominent; one character faces an unfortunate fate, which may change if the trio stops the development of SR232. While the alternating time periods and the recruits’ trading first-person narration generate a brisk pace . . .
Gauthier writes with panache, as when time-traveling Kevin tries to remain incognito in 2021: “I walked to the edge of the platform and noticed a lone fisherman in a flat bottom skiff with an electric lantern hanging out over the water. He reeled in a fish, unhooked it, and dropped it into his boat. But then he looked straight at me and the Dream Wheel.” The ending, considering all that unfolds, offers a surprising resolution. Futuristic and historical plots collide in this engaging, . . . time-hopping tale.
-- Kirkus Reviews