From National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor comes an epic fantasy about a mythic lost city and its dark past. 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 just five years old, he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he … someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form 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? And who is the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams?
In this sweeping and breathtaking novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the New York Times bestselling 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.
The answers await in Weep.
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Aboslute perfection!
This was unlike anything I’ve ever read. Incredible world and character building with no way of knowing what was the what! (Until way close to the end.) Lots of surprises! I don’t know what goes on inside Laini Taylor’s head, but she has a brilliant, colorful, imaginative mind that makes for an all-consuming story escape.
Lazlo Strange has always been obsessed about what happened to the city known as “Weep” ever since he felt it disappear as a little boy. He has read everything he could get his hands on even though the scholars believe the books to be just fairy tales. When a mysterious group shows up looking for a team to help them with a problem in Weep, Lazlo had to find a way to get invited.
It is really hard to describe what this book is about, but I can say that it was Wonderful! It is not a spin-off, or really anything like her other series. It is a whole new imaginative world. Laini Taylor does bring her elegant writing style, her gift for creating interesting characters, and exotic picturesque places. Be ready to get lost in your imagination.
I truly loved the world building; it was vivid and breathtaking. The first half of the book was creative and endearing. There was so much buildup to this beautiful forgotten culture, but then we actually got to Weep and it went downhill from there.
Now for the romance. As soon as Sarai and Lazlo met, they were making goo-goo eyes at each other. It truly was love at first sight. They barely even knew each other and they were ready to sacrifice everything! It made me want to gag myself with a spoon. It was also a bit creepy how Sarai could just go into Lazlo’s dreams and watch him and it just really hit the wrong note there.
I know a lot of people love the lyrical writing, but it honestly just interrupted the pacing for me.
All in all, a real let down.
Lazlo Strange is a war orphan, born without a name and raised without any sympathy for his plight—or for his vast imagination. But as he is playing in the orchard one day, pretending to be a famous Tizerkane warrior of… of… of where? The very name of the mystical city that lies across the desert is suddenly erased from his mind.
Erased from everyone’s mind, as it turns out. But what sort of magic could steal a name? Most people don’t even seem interested in the question, but Lazlo is determined to find out. And his quest leads him on one of the greatest adventures it has ever been our pleasure to read.
Lazlo is, in our opinion, one of the most sympathetic characters ever to grace the written page. The supporting cast is wonderfully rich, the dialog is so natural that you will believe every single word, and the story itself is a multi-layered masterpiece. But the writing… oh, the writing!
The writing is literature—lyrical and elegant. It rises from the page and envelops you in a world of art and mystery and magic. The vocabulary is advanced for a young adult novel, but it is never stilted. It flows… in as many senses of that word as you can imagine.
Taylor’s storytelling flows like the silk of a nomad’s tent unfurled in the desert heat, like the slow promise of spring, like the torrent of a waterfall. It flows like the wind, and like the waves of the sea, and like the sun as it slips beneath the horizon.
It meanders and then careens and then meanders again, its pacing delightfully varied and clearly intentional, signaled by meticulous word choice and by attentive punctuation in which every single comma (and ellipsis)… matters.
We read a good bit of it out loud to each other because we couldn’t help ourselves. And then we finished it separately because we couldn’t put it down. (And then we bought one for our local library because we couldn’t stand the idea of it not being there.)
If you love language and literature and imagination, if you love strange worlds and deep characters and beautiful dreams, if you love magic and puzzles and adventure and feels… then you will love this book as thoroughly as we do.
I love everything this author writes. My only sorry was that the book ended, there was another, but it isn’t available yet.
When I first started reading Strange the Dreamer my first feeling was that I was in for something special. I have never read a Laini Taylor book before and I was immediately struck by her use of language and the writing style is almost musical with a lilting flow. The language is mature in nature and very different from what you would normally expect in a YA read. The story itself is told in 3rd person but moves between the two main characters, Lazlo and Sarai. Lazlo is a wonderful character, quiet and unnasuming but full of wild dreams about the lost city of Weep. The stories that fuelled his play as a young child become his lifes work as an adult, channeling his time into learning all he can of the city from scraps left behind in the library he finds as his workplace. He is wonderfully earnest, yet there is a fire in him – so when a delegation arrives that promises an answer to his dreams he comes out from his shadow, his lifes work given meaning. Sarai is also in a strange form of existence, one of only 5 surviving children of the citadel of Weep her life is sheltered and borderline to poverty. As with all children of the citadel, she has a power passed down from her parents, Sarai holds the power of dreams but as the daughter of the Godess of Despair her world becomes one of never ending nightmare.
When Sarai’s and Lazlo’s worlds collide within their dreams they start to unravel the truth behind all that took place in Weep and a mystery that has haunted both the residents of Weep iteslf and those who remain in the citadel. The world building is beautiful, the story is quite a slow burn, providing you with the minimal amount of information that you need to form a picture of what is happening. This makes the reveals all the more satisfying and really gives you a chance to understand the world and appriciate the depth of thought put into its creation.
The only downside to this approach is that for the most part I felt that the side characters got left behind. Whist time was spent on the others within the Citadel, I felt that those who were met by Lazlo during his journey were almost a side thought and they appeared just enough to progress the story. There were some members of Lazlo’s party that I was desperate to find out more about, and I felt that there was plenty of opportunity within the 500+ pages to accommodate this as some parts could have done with a little trimming; the delicious slowness treading a very fine line between frustratingly dull at times. There is a second book in the works, so maybe these characters may get there turn then, but from the ending i’m not sure that they will.
In summary I found Strange the Dreamer to be a wonderful read if not a little slow at times. It was so beautifully different to the fantasy I have been reading recently and I give this 4*
Beautiful story! The author is amazing at spinning word art and the storyline with the unique characters will make this a classic re-read. Can’t wait for the next book in the series!
Wow, what a book. Such beautiful writing. A powerful story with a cliffhanger ending! When is book 2 coming out??!??
Lyrical, affecting, and wonderfully weird. I adored this book.
No words for how much I love this book.
Amazing!