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A review by bookwormpersephone
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
3.0
Oh Laini. You and I have had this love-hate relationship with your plot-building and writing style ever since DOSAB'S first and last book. While the latter I DNF'ed because of... Several reasons, there seems to be something that had me hold on to this one, despite having similar problems with its counterpart.
Strange the Dreamer is about a librarian that seeks to find the answers to the many mysteries haunting him, and one of them is Weep, a city that had long ago lost its real name. With a crooked nose that resulted from a book falling on his face and his relatively rugged appearance, Lazlo strange, orphan-turned-keeper of the forgotten parts of the library, had never considered himself to be the center of any epic stories. That would be Thyon Nero, the golden man who was destined to make the Queen of their kingdom rich by conjuring up Gold through alchemy. But never Lazlo, to him or to anyone around him.
But the universe had never known to follow anyone's prejudices and plans, for as the Godslayer of Weep had arrived to hire young men and women of their expertise, Lazlo was among them.
They journey to Weep, along with Thyon the Gold-maker and several other great minds, will not be easy. As the city, that which centuries of buried myths and records have described as a city of dreams, has become a city of desolation and fear.
And what a story it would be, fitting for the dreamer with the rugged face hiding a kind heart, to have Lazlo fall in love with the most unlikely young woman, her skin an astonishing blue.
When I think about strange the dreamer, my stomach gives a little flip. Because I remember how mesmerizing the world was. I was sucked into it. Gods (or not-so-godly) and ghosts and libraries and cities that lost their name. I devoured the first quarter, so far so good, and would have considered this book the author had made to dish out what my soul searched for in her beautiful writing in DOSAB... And then the other characters came into view.
Much like DOSAB, I didn't care for the other characters save for the main ones. I didn't see the Godslayer particularly scary, even as he was described as such. I didn't feel anything for Sarai's little family. Not that they were bland but... They didn't leave an impression on me.
Whenever chapters arrived dedicated to either Ruby, Feral, Minya, or Sparrow (though I liked her quite a bit), I give a little sigh and discreetly turn the page faster to read more about Lazlo and Sarai.
Now these two... They were the two lone stars in an otherwise empty sky. Every chapter with them was exquisite. The attraction, the mystery, the build-up of their romance was something I squealed over. If Lazlo was an great character before he met Sarai (and vice versa), he became 5x better when he interacted with Sarai. You can clearly see his kindness, his politeness, his SHYNESS, it was adorable. For them to find each other and slowly create something more than trust and friendship between them was satisfying until the very end (which I will not spoil, but darn it LAINI, you can't do this!!!)
Another thing I found problematic with DOSAB was, in the last book, there was a detached mini-story of someone I haven't met before. A seraphim that I, for the life of me, cannot picture how her story tied to the main plot at all. And I never got to because I never finished it. It threw off my reading experience, and my concentration towards the plot following Akiva and Karou and the rebellion oftentimes ended up being scattered because of this independent mini-series. It was like a commercial while watching TV.
This one doesn't have that problem, although there's still the problem with them being... Distant? Blurry? Common? I don't know how to describe it. Only that I didn't immerse myself in their arc as much as I did with Lazlo and Sarai's.
Thus, a 3.5 stars. 3 stars are for stories I'm going to forget in a period of time, while 4 stars are for stories I enjoyed but didn't particularly affect my whole being like 5 stars do. Strange the Dreamer is a strange (hehe) hybrid between a 4 and 3, a story I won't forget anytime soon, but also one I didn't particularly enjoy as much as a 4 star book.
Thank you for reading. I'll be checking out the 2nd book of this duology soon and hopefully it will hook me in to be more interested with the other characters other than Lazlo and Sarai.
Strange the Dreamer is about a librarian that seeks to find the answers to the many mysteries haunting him, and one of them is Weep, a city that had long ago lost its real name. With a crooked nose that resulted from a book falling on his face and his relatively rugged appearance, Lazlo strange, orphan-turned-keeper of the forgotten parts of the library, had never considered himself to be the center of any epic stories. That would be Thyon Nero, the golden man who was destined to make the Queen of their kingdom rich by conjuring up Gold through alchemy. But never Lazlo, to him or to anyone around him.
But the universe had never known to follow anyone's prejudices and plans, for as the Godslayer of Weep had arrived to hire young men and women of their expertise, Lazlo was among them.
They journey to Weep, along with Thyon the Gold-maker and several other great minds, will not be easy. As the city, that which centuries of buried myths and records have described as a city of dreams, has become a city of desolation and fear.
And what a story it would be, fitting for the dreamer with the rugged face hiding a kind heart, to have Lazlo fall in love with the most unlikely young woman, her skin an astonishing blue.
When I think about strange the dreamer, my stomach gives a little flip. Because I remember how mesmerizing the world was. I was sucked into it. Gods (or not-so-godly) and ghosts and libraries and cities that lost their name. I devoured the first quarter, so far so good, and would have considered this book the author had made to dish out what my soul searched for in her beautiful writing in DOSAB... And then the other characters came into view.
Much like DOSAB, I didn't care for the other characters save for the main ones. I didn't see the Godslayer particularly scary, even as he was described as such. I didn't feel anything for Sarai's little family. Not that they were bland but... They didn't leave an impression on me.
Whenever chapters arrived dedicated to either Ruby, Feral, Minya, or Sparrow (though I liked her quite a bit), I give a little sigh and discreetly turn the page faster to read more about Lazlo and Sarai.
Now these two... They were the two lone stars in an otherwise empty sky. Every chapter with them was exquisite. The attraction, the mystery, the build-up of their romance was something I squealed over. If Lazlo was an great character before he met Sarai (and vice versa), he became 5x better when he interacted with Sarai. You can clearly see his kindness, his politeness, his SHYNESS, it was adorable. For them to find each other and slowly create something more than trust and friendship between them was satisfying until the very end (which I will not spoil, but darn it LAINI, you can't do this!!!)
Another thing I found problematic with DOSAB was, in the last book, there was a detached mini-story of someone I haven't met before. A seraphim that I, for the life of me, cannot picture how her story tied to the main plot at all. And I never got to because I never finished it. It threw off my reading experience, and my concentration towards the plot following Akiva and Karou and the rebellion oftentimes ended up being scattered because of this independent mini-series. It was like a commercial while watching TV.
This one doesn't have that problem, although there's still the problem with them being... Distant? Blurry? Common? I don't know how to describe it. Only that I didn't immerse myself in their arc as much as I did with Lazlo and Sarai's.
Thus, a 3.5 stars. 3 stars are for stories I'm going to forget in a period of time, while 4 stars are for stories I enjoyed but didn't particularly affect my whole being like 5 stars do. Strange the Dreamer is a strange (hehe) hybrid between a 4 and 3, a story I won't forget anytime soon, but also one I didn't particularly enjoy as much as a 4 star book.
Thank you for reading. I'll be checking out the 2nd book of this duology soon and hopefully it will hook me in to be more interested with the other characters other than Lazlo and Sarai.