Dion: A Tale of the Highway by Jonathon Maas is a dark tale of the influence of mythology and dreams. Dion the main character awakes from a dream not knowing who he is and is forced to take a car trip, driving where he is told, without question. The story has a bizarre quality of dreaming and surreal worlds, hell, heaven, and earth. Gods and other mythical creatures pop up through-out the tale and provides background and story continuity. The writing is descriptive and detailed. Breaks in the text help to emphasize parts of the story and help the reader make the many changes of setting and characters. Throughout the story Dion is driving the car that has a mystery locked in the trunk. Along the way Dion discovers his father is Zeus and that there is a civil war among the gods and the related magical beings. Dion is in the middle of the battle. In the end he remembers he is Dionysus, god of grape & wine, and he prevails. ( )

There is clear evidence of hard work, endless researching and quite a bit of maturity to be found in Jonathan Maas' latest book, Dion: A Tale of the Highway. The story opens in the barest, most confusing fashion possible, for both reader and character. Dion awakes on the side of a road, completely naked and unsure of who his is and where he’s at and most importantly, how he got there. A strange dream still lingers on his memory. Besides him there is a car and in the car, a note:

“Drive this vehicle. Drive along this road, in the direction that the vehicle is pointed now. Drive until this road ends, and then drive some more”

That’s not creepy, right?

I thought initially, okay, this is going to be a travelogue about Dion, and along the way he’ll meet some people and do some things and they all learn something about themselves and the world around them. Maybe a subtle and modern tip of the hat to Kerouac. I couldn’t have been more wrong. This story is so packed full of mystery, mythology, incredible philosophical ideas and millions of punches and kicks to the stomach, that by page 50 I had to watch funny cat videos on YouTube to ensure I’d get to sleep that night.

Jonathan Maas likes his mythology and he’s damn good at relaying and even manipulating it into a clever story of his own. Readers will once again experience the mastery of Maas’ tireless research, breathing new life into otherwise dead characters and making them original, lovable, relatable and even more loathsome than before.

But I digress. Back to Dion.


Dion likes to party. He also like to drink, and if you let him, he’ll talk your ears off about the benefits of alcohol and more precisely wine. I will not lie and say that I haven’t had more urges to enjoy a glass than before I read this book, however I will say that I have come to appreciate the taste and smell more, now that I’ve read this book.

One especially great feature in this book are the trailing footnotes. They’re a compendium of thoughts, truths, ideas and otherwise good bits of knowledge that help the reader along the way. There is a clear separation from the main story and the footnotes, but I found that the footnotes often enhanced a scene or description.

Along Dion’s journey he has a handful of outer body experiences that are flooded with incredible descriptions of faraway places, other worlds, Hell itself and even as far back as before mankind even graced this beautiful planet. Dion is met with difficult choices that bare the weight of quite literally the entire world, lost love and even facing the disappointment of a parent, but our man Dion does it all with grace and style and above all with a glass of wine on his hand. ( )