A review by c0d3nam3qt
DallerGut Dream Department Store: The Dream You Ordered is Sold Out by Mi-Ye Lee 이미예

3.5

 “Why do we dream?”

This novel ponders that every human, through sleep, travels to a dream land. There are famous dream makers in this land, similar to movie directors or game developers, each with their own specialties. The dreams they make are then produced as physical items that are distributed to stores and sold to visitors and inhabitants of this dream land. Once the Human wakes they have no memory of the dream land or the fact that they specifically chose the dream they had. 

The story begins with the protagonist Penny preparing for her interview at the Dallergut Dream Department store. She talks with her friend Assam, who is a human sized cat like creature called a Noctiluca. Assam as well as many other Noctilucas have the job of distributing robes to human visitors who arrive to dream land wearing only what they chose to sleep in that night. Penny is successful in her interview and hired on. As the story progresses she meets her fellow staff members, visits each level of the department store, learns all about different types of dreams, how one pays for a dream and much more.

I absolutely loved all of the world building in the first few chapters. There is a very lovely story-within-a-story that Assam gives Penny, which explains the existence of the dream land called The Time God and the Three Disciples. It accomplishes setting up a lot of exposition without it feeling too heavy handed.

Penny as a character really serves in place of the reader. She doesn’t know much about the Dallergut Dream Department store or much of how the economy in the dream land works despite having lived there her whole life. Penny learns that customers purchase a dream, then later they have the dream and some of the emotions it elicited are then collected as payment. 

In a lot of ways the dream land is quite similar to the human world. There are restaurants, and banks. The inhabitants can find love and have children or pets like cats and dogs. They can even purchase dreams for themselves for when they sleep. Each emotion, just like earthly currencies, fluctuates in value. There are even crime syndicate rings.

After Penny is more settled in this new job there is less overall world building and each new chapter fits a formula. Penny is introduced to a type of dream, we as the readers meet human characters that have a problem in their lives, the human visits the Dallergut Dream Department store and purchases the dream that Penny learns about, the dream helps them solve their problem. We learn about several types of dreams, which includes: 

• “Precognitive Dreams” which help you see a glimpse of your future and can be the cause of deja vu. 
• “Nightmares” or trauma/stress related dreams that help you move past difficult times in your life. 
• “Paralysis Dreams” to make you feel free when you wake.
• Napping specific dreams for short sleeps.
• “Custom dreams” which are made to order and usually created to help a loved one with their death.

Overall I thought this is a very wholesome and imaginative story. The main focus is of course on the department store and about helping customers find the right dream for them, and it is successful in this approach. I do wish that the same level of world building that the first few chapters had continued throughout. On many occasions Penny must visit another location, but it will skip over her travel there almost completely. These would have been perfect opportunities to show more of what the everyday parts of the dream land are like. I had so many questions about the world that were never answered. I think if we got to see Penny's life outside of work I could have been even more immersed in the world.

I would recommend this to readers that enjoy light Sci-Fi or light fantasy and/or fans of “Before the Coffee Gets Cold” and “What You Are Looking For Is in the Library”.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advanced copy.