Strange the Dreamer

Strange the Dreamer is the first novel in the new series, of the same title by American author Laini Taylor. The previous bestselling trilogy Daughter of Smoke and Bone enchanted younger and older adult readers alike. ​Strange the Dreamer follows a new protagonist in a mythic world sharing some elements with the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. Lazlo Strange is a war orphan, a boy grown up as a librarian and servant to the more powerful and wealthy scholars of his city. Lazlo seems to escape the tedium of his daily life by daydreaming and fueling his obsession with the lost city of Weep.  For Lazlo holds some faded memory of the name the city once possessed before it vanished from memory, leaving behind the new mournful name, “Weep”. Nero, a boy of Lazlo’s age, the youngest scholar and alchemist related to the queen, is unhappily indebted to Lazlo. For while Nero is learned and wealthy, Lazlo is penniless but imaginative. When emissaries arrive from Weep, the legendary Godslayer and his troop of warriors, Nero is invited to join an expedition of natural theorists, engineers and philosophers to solve the mysteries of Weep. Lazlo joins the expedition, qualified only as a storyteller. The mysteries of Weep are far more than Lazlo could have imagined. ​Once in Weep, the impossibly vivid dreams that lend Lazlo his name, “Strange, the Dreamer”, manifest a very real seeming blue-skinned goddess. Lazlo soon discovers that this goddess was supposedly slain in the Citadel by the Godslayer and his troops. Soon Lazlo must reconcile what is dream and what is reality as the goddess that once traumatised Weep turns her attention toward him, unlocking  Lazlo’s past.
Strange the Dreamer is a fascinating adventure and mystery, the complex setting and convincing characters provide rich detail to a dark story hopeful for a brighter future.