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Summary
Summary
The highly anticipated, thrilling sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Strange the Dreamer , from National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the bestselling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy.
Sarai has lived and breathed nightmares since she was six years old.
She believed she knew every horror, and was beyond surprise.
She was wrong.
In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.
Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice--save the woman he loves, or everyone else ?--while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the muse of nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.
As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel's near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: Must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?
Love and hate, revenge and redemption, destruction and salvation all clash in this gorgeous sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Strange the Dreamer .
Author Notes
Laini Taylor was born in Chico, California in 1971. She received a degree in English from UC Berkeley in 1994. She also studied illustration at the California College of Arts and Crafts. Before becoming a full-time author, she worked as a travel book editor, a bookseller, a waitress, and an illustrator/designer. Her works include Blackbringer, Silksinger, Lips Touch: Three Times, and the Daughter of Smoke and Bone series. In 2014 her title Dreams of Gods and Monsters made The New York Times Best seller list.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-Following directly after the acclaimed first novel in Taylor's lush series, Strange the Dreamer, this sequel finds the lovers Lazlo Strange, former librarian-turned-warrior, and his beloved, Sarai, thrown into an impossible situation. Lazlo, while trying to preserve the citadel of the Mesarthim, is unable to save Sarai from a terrible fall. Impaled on an iron gate, Sarai dies only to be brought back as a ghost by Minya, a child with the power to control the dead and a uncontrollable need for vengeance against the Seraphim who travel between multiple worlds wreaking havoc on the lives of lesser beings. Now they must all find a way to work together to free the worlds from the godlike Seraphim despite overwhelming odds. The author of the "Daughter of Smoke and Bone" trilogy has created an intricate universe that will both intrigue and repel readers. Unfortunately, the constant switching between scenes, points of view, and plot lines is confusing and somewhat detracts from what would otherwise be truly lovely world-building. VERDICT Purchase where Taylor has a loyal following and where the previous title is popular.-Jane Henriksen Baird, formerly at Anchorage Public Library, AK © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Horn Book Review
At the end of Strange the Dreamer (rev. 3/17), godspawn Sarai plunged to her death from the floating blue citadel overlooking the city of Weep; now the vengeful Minya, still intent on invading Weep, is holding Sarais soul in thrall. In interspersed chapters, in another world, another young woman is dealing with her own trauma. After being rejected by the Mesarthim, forcibly separated from her beloved sister, and married off to the highest bidder, Nova uses her own formidable powers to regain control of her destiny. By the time Nova appears in the main narrative, readers have learned how her story fits among the puzzle pieces of the plot. The only thing that remains is to figure out how both Minya and Nova can find a measure of healing, redemption, and peace. As always, Taylors prodigious imagination is on full display: marvelous world-building, suspenseful plotting, complex characterization, finely crafted prose, and grand thematic flourishes make her one of the most formidable contemporary writers in the YA fantasy genre. jonathan hunt (c) Copyright 2018. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Love and hatred haunt survivors in this otherworldly sequel.It's been 15 years since the people of Weep slaughtered the gods and godspawn in the seraph-shaped citadel, an event known as the Liberation by the citizens of Weepand the Carnage by the five godspawn who secretly survived. But an explosion revealed their existence and killed 17-year-old Sarai. Yet she remains, anchored by malevolent Minya and still in love with Lazlo Strange. Grief-stricken Lazlo experiments with his newfound smith powers and reunites with Sarai in exotic, erotic dreams. Also sharing narrative duty: fellow blue-skinned, magically gifted godspawn Ruby, Feral, and Sparrowabsorbed in their own romantic triangleMinya, literally haunted by lives lost in the Carnage, and the mysterious Nova, fleeing a wintry wasteland in pursuit of her sister Kora and revenge. Freed from isolation, the godspawn struggle to connect, wondering about their parentsboth Mesarthim "gods" and unwilling Weep humansand their missing fellow godspawn. Taylor (Strange the Dreamer, 2017, etc.) dances between fantasy and sci-fi, indulging in gods, magic, alchemy, and lost desert civilizations, only to subvert them with spaceships, interdimensional travel, and alien worlds. Depending on readers' tastes, this is ornate, emotionally charged, and poeticor florid, overdone, overstuffed, and angst-y. The people of Weep are brown-skinned, but godspawn turn blue when they are in contact with mesarthium.A sequel that surpasses the original. (Fantasy. 14-18) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Near the end of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, the revival of which just closed on Broadway, Prior Walter, a man living with AIDS near the turn of the millennium, confronts a literal angel about his own refusal to die. Death usually has to take life away, he says. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. Angels in America features a strange overlap of harsh reality and blistering fantasy: during the height of the AIDS crisis, a man is visited by, and eventually visits, a near-unbelievable angel. It's a six-hour production that seems like it may be difficult for audiences to grasp, but it first opened in 1993 to critical acclaim (part one, Millennium Approaches, won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama) and the current incarnation claimed a Tony for best revival. Laini Taylor is no stranger to awards herself or, for that matter, to angels. Her high-fantasy epic Strange the Dreamer (2017) was a 2018 Printz Honor Book, despite the fact that this kind of genre fiction is often overlooked during awards seasons. Like Kushner, Taylor seems to have tapped into something that people people in America especially desperately need to hear. And, as in Angels, that thing seems to be hope In Muse of Nightmares, Taylor completes the story she began in Strange the Dreamer. When last we saw them, her characters were in the direst of straits: Lazlo Strange, orphaned librarian, has discovered he has powers he knew nothing about and a history that may turn his newfound friends against him; Sarai, the daughter of a goddess, has died and become a ghost; and Minya, whose dark magic and single-minded focus has kept her in the body of a child for almost 20 years, turns a vengeful eye toward the city of Weep, which wants only to be freed from its painful past. As gods and humans struggle to come together, a tale of two sisters somehow connected to Weep and its war begins to unravel, and they may chart the course of its entire future. It's a sequel that often feels boundless. Taylor travels far into the history of Weep and of the beings that once conquered it. It is not a kind history: its legacy is that of power-hungry men who see themselves as gods, of children held in cages and used as pawns. Taylor could not have known, at the time of writing, how chillingly relevant to our own world this scenario would become. When the world grows dark, it seems that many people question the importance of fantasy writing. For those who view it as mere escapism, that's all it is a nice break from the harsh reality of things, but ultimately unimportant or unproductive. But whether its Angels in America or Strange the Dreamer, fantasy, in all its many forms, does much more than that. In her Printz Honor acceptance speech, Taylor discussed the importance of fantasy, now more than ever. Human decency depends on empathy, she said. Empathy depends on imagination. And what fantasy gives readers, especially young ones, is the ability to imagine worlds that can be remade. They can look at a community that mirrors our own and imagine it changed, and only by imagining it changed can we hope to change it. In Muse of Nightmares, the world changes in dramatic ways, but also in small ones: as she plumbs the darkness of humanity, as her characters make earth-shattering and life-changing choices, Taylor also keeps her finger on the pulse of ordinary magic. Scenes of everyday life, love, and friendship are woven into the drama, and they are no less important for their lack of world-altering consequences. It is here, perhaps, that Taylor shines the brightest: she's always been a wordsmith, and this book is no exception, but the attention she pays to the people who aren't the heroes, the care given to ordinary life and its immense importance, elevates this from an entertaining epic to a deeply necessary, sometimes devastatingly so, work of art. For readers, this is the message that matters. This is the gift that fantasy gives (and Taylor gives it better than most): even in dark times, especially in dark times, life matters. We hand these books to readers, young readers especially, not only so they know that monsters can be fought, but so that they can look at a monstrous world and see that hope exists alongside the darkness.--Maggie Reagan Copyright 2018 Booklist