Title: Strange the Dreamer
Author: Laini Taylor
Publisher: Hachette Audio
Source: Purchased
Narrator: Steve West
Summary:
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 200 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?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries – including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?
In this sweeping and breathtaking new novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the New York Timesbest-selling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, the shadow of the past is as real as the ghosts who haunt the citadel of murdered gods. Fall into a mythical world of dread and wonder, moths and nightmares, love and carnage.
Welcome to Weep.
My Thoughts:
I went into this story blind, only knowing it was big amongst the BookTubers. Never realized, or maybe I forgot, the title is actually the name of the main character we follow.
The main character, as you know now, is Strange the Dreamer. He dreams of a town called Weep. It’s an ancient town that disappeared from everyone’s memory. He scours archives and all kinds of records to prove it existed. One day a resident of Weep comes to Strange’s town to get a few people to help him. The town of Weep doesn’t have some experts in some key areas. Strange has to fight for his place because he isn’t even allowed to interview with the person from Weep.
Strange gets chosen, and among others heads off to Weep to find out what it is they need help with. Turns out there is a tower, used by the Gods, where townspeople would be held prisoner kind of as slaves for the Gods. The Gods would put emotions in the people and make them fall in love with them, and bear their children. The townspeople want the tower gone. What they don’t know is there are 3 demi-gods trapped in the tower. One of which is quite upset, big understatement, with the townspeople of Weep for leaving them and trapping them in the tower.
There is a bit of a romance that starts between Strange and one of the Demi-Gods in the tower. What Strange doesn’t realize in the beginning is that she is real because she visits him in his dreams, and he always has some interesting dreams. That is how he got his name, Strange the Dreamer.
I felt for the townspeople, their struggle to get this tower gone, but also felt sad for the Demi-Gods left in the tower. They have lived their whole lives alone, surviving on what food could be brought to them by ghosts. Not the greatest of living situations.
The end threw a surprise twist, and I’ve been dying to read the next book, Muse of Nightmares, but I don’t currently own it, and I’ve been trying to focus on books I own and haven’t read. I may get the audible copy or see if my library has it and I can check it out through OverDrive. I don’t know how much longer I can hold back the struggle to not go buy this book. I couldn’t tell you how many times a day I think about getting Muse of Nightmares, because I was so hooked by the end of Strange the Dreamer.
