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A review by zeph1337
Dreams of the Dying by Nicolas Lietzau
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I knew almost nothing about this book when going into. I pretty much read one glowing review, saw that it was by a German indie author and that it was included in Kindle Unlimited. So I decided to read it.
The core theme about this book is the MC Jespars struggle with mental illness and past trauma. All this constant struggling with himself, being plagued by nightmares and not being able to open up about it with others and carrying along his depression is displayed in an excellent way and really makes you feel with the MC. We see him forming and destroying bonds and relationships and there is a bit of a weird love triangle there which does make sense with the context of his state of mind but just wasn't something I was interested in.
There is another POV called "The Man" which is mainly used to carry along this books main Mystery which I thought was compelling overall but I thought its resolution was rather bland and disappointing which kind of made the overarching plot not being the greatest either.
On the side of worldbuiling I thought this is pretty creative and the author even went through the struggle to create his own language.
The soft magic system was fine and I especially loved how it was used with the context of dreaming. There is some Inception type thing where you can enter someone elses dream and I thought all the dream sequences were very well written and just fascinating combined with a fair amount of dread and horror that hit really hard.
So overall I really liked this debut novel with its strongest parts being display of mental illness and dreamy/horror ambience.
The core theme about this book is the MC Jespars struggle with mental illness and past trauma. All this constant struggling with himself, being plagued by nightmares and not being able to open up about it with others and carrying along his depression is displayed in an excellent way and really makes you feel with the MC. We see him forming and destroying bonds and relationships and there is a bit of a weird love triangle there which does make sense with the context of his state of mind but just wasn't something I was interested in.
There is another POV called "The Man" which is mainly used to carry along this books main Mystery which I thought was compelling overall but I thought its resolution was rather bland and disappointing which kind of made the overarching plot not being the greatest either.
On the side of worldbuiling I thought this is pretty creative and the author even went through the struggle to create his own language.
The soft magic system was fine and I especially loved how it was used with the context of dreaming. There is some Inception type thing where you can enter someone elses dream and I thought all the dream sequences were very well written and just fascinating combined with a fair amount of dread and horror that hit really hard.
So overall I really liked this debut novel with its strongest parts being display of mental illness and dreamy/horror ambience.