Strange the Dreamer (Strange the Dreamer, #1) by Laini Taylor

My rating: five stars

Genre: YA, fantasy

Edition: paperback

Goodreads 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 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?

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?

Welcome to Weep.

I have been wanting to read this book for the longest time! Daughter of Smoke and Bone is one of my favorite series EVER and it made me curious to read this series. Chloe from bookswithchloe on YouTube had a read along and a liveshow where she talked about this book on her Patreon at the end of February. It was just so perfect that this book was chosen (as I read it in February and am just super behind on my blog posts)! I honestly wish I hadn’t waited this long because I LOVED it.

Likes: All the suspense and questions were beautifully worked into this story. I usually don’t care for not knowing things, but the way that it is done in this book makes it fun and like a game. I love the characters in this story so much. They each have their positives and negatives, but they have such rich backstories that explain why they are who they are. The only person I did not care for might be a spoiler, but I swear they are the worst. I get that bad things happened in their past, but that just doesn’t excuse the things they are doing in my eyes. There is so much beautiful imagery in this book. The descriptions of dreams and the different parts of the world are incredible. I truly love Laini Taylor’s writing. Something else besides her descriptions that I love are the plot twists and crazy surprises that are in her stories. She always makes mysteries that I think are the main big one that I am trying to solve throughout the book, and then, BAM, there was really a huge twist that comes that I didn’t see because I was so focused on the smaller mystery. It is insane how skilled she is to be able to do this, and it makes her stories powerful and unique.

Dislike: The book was a little slow in the beginning. It wasn’t to where I was bored or anything, it was just kind of dragging on. I don’t know how to explain it exactly. I was loving what I was reading, but I wasn’t enjoying the process of reading it because of the pacing. Another thing that I did not like was a huge spoiler at the beginning of the book. I won’t say any more about it except that it really made me enjoy later parts of the book less.

Overall, I was not disappointed in this story at all. I had high expectations because of how much I loved Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and this book lived up to them! I don’t think I liked it as much as that series, but I did truly love it and look forward to reading the next one!