Strange the Dreamer

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor    533 pages

"The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?"

Well, one answer lies in the fact that there are five people (are they really people) living in the Citadel in Weep, including Sarai, whose power lies in her ability to influence people's dreams.

I really enjoyed Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone series, so I was excited to pick up this new book. The writing is just as beautiful as I expected, and I enjoyed how she crafts the characters and the story, bringing the characters and the storylines together slowly so you can appreciate how they are connected. While I skimmed through some of the more romantic spots (I am not a teenager and these parts fail to make me swoon.  I am jaded enough that my eyes roll a bit . . . but that's just me, not really a criticism of the book.)

The one flaw in the story was . . . it's part of a trilogy.  I hadn't paid attention when I picked up the book, and when I was about 3/4 of the way through it, I was thinking that there was way too much story to wrap up by the end (even though it's 533 pages) --- and I got about 50 pages to the end and then looked at the last page and figured out that of course, Taylor is going to leave me hanging.   *sigh*

Here's an example of her writing, a bit that I thought really said something about not just the characters, but something that generally is thought-provoking and maybe even something some readers could relate to: "So they layered cynicism atop their longing, and it was something like laying laughter over the darkness -- self preservation of an uglier stripe. And thus did they harden themselves, by choosing to meet hate with hate."   p 147