Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

“And that's how you go on. You lay laughter over the dark parts. The more dark parts, the more you have to laugh. With defiance, with abandon, with hysteria, any way you can.”

Rating

Review

Lazlo Strange is a librarian, an orphan, and a dreamer, obsessed with a city lost to time almost all his life. Lazlo has accepted that he may never find out what happened to this forgotten city, and may never get to see it, until one day, the chance suddenly arises. Strange The Dreamer is a story about dreams and nightmares and about what happens when we are come face to face with both.

It’s been a year and a half now since I first read Strange the Dreamer, and half a year since I re-read it, and I still am barely able to explain how much this book means to me. That past year has been spent in search of a book just as fantastic, just as addicting, just as meaningful as this one, and so far, nothing has been able to come quite close. There’s something so captivating about this story, and there isn’t a single piece of it I don’t entirely love.

One of the best things about this series has to be the characters. There’s nothing flat about any of them, with no characters feeling shallow or plain. There is also no clear cut line of good and bad, with the characters falling on opposing sides being just as moving and convincing of their feelings and motives. But the best of it all is how strongly Laini makes you feel for Lazlo and Sarai, and how quickly you fall in love with them. Within a few chapters Lazlo had well and fully stolen my heart, and I was willing to do anything to protect my small library child. The same happened just as swiftly with Sarai, and the fact that Laini made me care for both POVs just as much is truly a feat.

Another “best thing” about this series (I’m just going to be upfront, everything is a best thing) is the fantastic world building. The city of Weep felt like a real and tangible world to me, with gorgeous descriptions of both the real and dream world bringing the beauty of the two to life in my head. The lore behind everything is fantastic as well, and nothing was left unexplained unless the narrators didn’t know the answers themselves either. Additionally, the pacing of how we received the lore concerning the world was fantastic as well, never being too much to overwhelm, but not too little to leave us confused and questioning what was going on.

The story itself, the plot, was also fantastic as well. This isn’t a standard fast-paced, action-packed fantasy plot, even though it still contains just as much intrigue, mystery, and action. There are plenty of hints and foreshadowing throughout the story to make the surprises feel extremely believable, but everything is still done in such a way that you either slowly learn what is going on (with a feeling of dread rising within you), or it still ends up surprising you completely in the end.

Due to the style of writing (my absolute favorite thing about this book), things read more like a dream, and build more slowly, but it still works wonderfully to tell the story without making it too slow or boring. It’s almost like reading an old fairytale, with as much focus on the way the story is told as the story itself. Something about Laini’s writing grips you and just doesn’t let you go, and I spent almost a full day sitting in my reading chair, lost in the pages of this world and the story of these characters. Laini’s writing is the true reason this story continues to mean so much to me, leaving a mark on me that goes further than the impact of the story, world, and characters.

I still remember the first time reading this book so clearly, my reactions to the twists and turns, and how lost I felt after finishing. Even in my reread this book captured me once again, even though I knew what would happen and how it would end. There’s something so magical about this story, so compelling, and I know it will be a world I’ll come back to time and time again, even after the series has long been finished.

If I can only pick one book that everyone in the world needs to read, it would be this one.