Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Author: Laini Taylor
Genre: YA Fantasy
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Year of Publication: 2017
Disclaimer—I listened to an audio CD version of this book, because what else is there to do when you have a long commute and are sick of hearing the same five Ed Sheeran songs on repeat? Unfortunately, my lackluster experience with the change in medium has impacted my review negatively. I’ve done my best to call out those parts, but since I can’t say how I would have felt if I’d read the physical book instead, take the bad things with a grain of salt.
Main Characters: Lazlo (3/5)—He follows the classic outcast-turned-hero journey. His head is so far in the clouds that he becomes unrelatable, except for a few shining moments that are somehow quite impactful. Sarai (1/5)—She’s one of the dullest female characters I’ve read in a while. If it hadn’t been an audiobook, I would have skimmed her chapters and called it good enough.
Secondary Characters: Somehow, all of the secondary characters just seemed self-serving, pompous, and immature, so they kind of blended together. This problem was only exacerbated by the fact that obviously the same person was narrating for all of them.
Pacing: This book was needlessly long. The author was given to tangents that dissected every thought that every character in the book had ever had. At some point, I gave up on fighting it, assuming she was aiming to rival Charles Dickens (who was paid per word).
Accuracy of Publisher’s Synopsis: It’s all pretty accurate
Resolution: This was one of those book endings that I read and thought “are you kidding me?” I’m not naïve enough to think that every book has to have exactly the ending I want or it’s a bad book, but this one just completely missed the mark for me. I understand that Taylor wanted a cliffhanger ending, but with the vast amount of creativity she displayed in the rest of the book, I feel she could have done better.
The Good: I’ll give the author this—her book was incredibly imaginative and well-written. I can tell she has potential to be a great writer, but I think she lost sight of the genre she was writing in. Her prose is just a little too verbose for a YA fantasy book.
The Not So Good: There were too many narrators in this book. The book is titled after Lazlo, who is the only narrator for a decent portion of the book. Then, we randomly meet a girl named Sarai. But that’s not all—Taylor has several more narrators up her sleeve that appear at random throughout the book without warning. One second, I’m in Lazlo’s head, the next, I’m in Thyon Nero’s.
The romance between Sarai and Lazlo was gag-worthy for me. If I had to listen to one more second of Lazlo waxing poetically about kissing Sarai, I was going to drive my car off the road. I managed to skip three tracks in a row of them just staring into each other’s eyes. I don’t think I missed anything.
A note on the narration: I feel like the female characters were portrayed as juvenile and petty. I’m not sure if this was just due to the narrator’s struggle to portray the cadence of female speech properly or a result of the actual dialogue that Taylor wrote.
One of the things I struggled with most was that because of the dual perspectives of Sarai and Lazlo, who both offered reasonable viewpoints from each side, it was hard to determine who exactly the antagonist was. I’m still not completely sure.
Overall Impression: Despite a bevvy of great ideas and fluid prose, the poorly developed characters robbed this book of its potential.
Would I recommend it? I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it, as I think it’s slated to be a popular series. I might even read other books from this author in the future. However, with the way this one ended, and the way I felt when I was listening to it, I won’t be picking up the sequel, Muse of Nightmares .
The Word Snob 