“He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn’t sleep at all.”

I love Laini Taylor. I adored Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and I really liked Days of Blood and Starlight. (I admit, I was not 100% enthusiastic about Dreams of Gods and Monsters. But as a whole, the trilogy was top-notch.) So I was ready to love this.

And I did. Until the very last page.**

Super quick overview here:
Like the Smoke & Bone trilogy, Strange the Dreamer takes place in a fantasy world at an unknown time in history. Our hero, Lazlo Strange, is an orphan, who by chance, has his dream job working in the largest library in the land. There he spends every waking moment learning about the magical lost kingdom of Weep — a mythical land that disappeared years ago.

When out of nowhere, a band of soldiers from Weep arrives in his city, looking for the smartest scholars and scientists to come and help them save their magical kingdom, Lazlo can’t imagine not being allowed to join them. Fortunately, he impresses their leader with his knowledge of their history and language, and finds himself along for the journey as the leader’s personal secretary.

Meanwhile, we learn about a strange group of isolated teenagers who live somewhere near Weep, and all have magical powers of some sort. One can control the weather. One can control the growth of any plant she comes in contact with. And one can enter and manipulate the dreams of the citizens of Weep. And none of them ever know she’s there.

Until Lazlo Strange.

Really, I could go on and on for 100 more paragraphs, telling you all of my favorite parts. But as alwaysanswerb said earlier this year in her most excellent review, “Just read it.”

Seriously, if you’ve ever read and liked anything at all by Laini Taylor, you need to read this.

And if you’ve never read anything by Laini Taylor, what the hell?

Its beautifully written. The fantasy world is amazingly real. It is at times shocking and heartbreaking and funny and sad and it made me feel all the feels. A story of love and hope and magic and intolerance and hate. It had everything.

**Ugh. After over 500 pages, I was pretty angry when I got to the end of this one.

I should have known that this book would be the beginning of a series of books. Its really my own fault for not researching this fact. Because when I got to the last page, and saw this:

I was so invested in the story that I was really annoyed. It was like a slap in the face.