A really enjoyable second volume on this "duology". ( )

How an author can so vividly bring humanity to life by illustrating it through gods and magic and dreams still completely floors me. At it's essence, this series IS about humanity, that string on which we all find ourselves dangling by fingertips these days. It is, to me, a love letter to the power of stories and the possibility of dreams. And I can give it no higher praise than that.

Read it. ( )

This book is as good as the first one! ( )

What a beautiful book. I loved how it's about grief and healing from trauma. ( )

The sequel to Strange the Dreamer disappointed me -- which I suppose one can see from the rating I gave it. So, let me explain why.

First, the pacing. Taylor introduces two new characters and a backstory thread that is of little consequence to the main story. This just destroyed the pacing for me. Doling out the pertinent information about the characters' backstories via character-to-character interaction, or a few reminiscent paragraphs here and there would've kept things moving. Learning about their daily lives as children in detail added little -- except pages of course.

For me, this also made the other slow parts, intended as a break from the action, seem tedious instead of a welcome respite. Mostly these were the dreamplay of Lazlo and Sarai, which were appropriately brief, but, as I said, seemed tedious on top of the pointless digressions into side characters' backstories.

So, basically, no one dies. Or if they do, they come back one way or another. And, well, in a story full of past atrocities, it seems like some death would be appropriate. Sure, yeah, this is YA fiction, but I've read enough of that to know character death happens. It's not taboo.

The one character who does die, commits suicide. And this is lamented later, but neither during the lamenting nor at the time of the suicide does anyone think to ask Minya to tether her soul. Does only Sarai warrant this sort of saving?

Related to the atrocities, that's all forgiven. Just be contrite, say you’re sorry, and promise to leave it in the past. Really. And should one of the relatives of one of your victims justifiably kill you in a rage, no sweat. You'll be brought back, and damn the poeticness of your death. Later, your killer will be sorry for having killed you (of course!). But since you're back from the dead, it's all erased. What nice, clean moral calculus. Ugh.

The people who carried out the various atrocious acts in this story, are never inherently bad people of course. Hence the pages and pages of backstory illustrating what a nice girl the new antagonist was, only twisted up by circumstance into a murderous, two-century-long rampage across multiple worlds. And when he's invited to come do the honors (slaughter the mesarthim children and babies), was just having a bad day, not committing premeditated infanticide. And okay, sure, under the right circumstances people do all sorts of stuff, but it becomes a bit hard to swallow that all the culprits alive in the present in the story were just having bad days/years/centuries.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for forgiveness. All for taking the circumstances surrounding people's actions into account. But a story where everyone forgives and is forgiven and rehabilitated, and every bad act is explained away by circumstance does not satisfy. It's too neat, too tidy.

Edit #1:
Oops, didn't say anything about the audio aspect of this audiobook. It was great in fact. Steve West did a standup job with the voices, both male and female. If you're going to read this and like audiobooks at all, I strongly recommend the audio version. ( )