Laini Taylor is the New York Times bestselling author of the Printz Honor Book Strange the Dreamer and its sequel, Muse of Nightmares. She is also the author of the global sensation the Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy and the companion novella Night of Cake & Puppets. Taylor's other works include the Dreamdark books: Blackbringer and Silksinger, and the National Book Award finalist Lips Touch: Three Times. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, illustrator Jim Di Bartolo, and their daughter, Clementine. Her website is lainitaylor.com. You can find more of my reviews of Laini Taylor's works here.
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 astonishing and heart-stopping sequel to the New York Times bestseller Strange the Dreamer.
Strange the Dreamer had more of a fairytale-feel to the story: immediately we were welcomed into a world of mystique and mystery, with the hopes of finding some answers—or if not answers, then finding more dreams. Such was the ambience, which is what made anything seem possible. But, with Muse of Nightmares, we know are well-acquainted with Lazlo and Sarai, Minya and Eril-Fane. Now, we are looking for more story surrounding them, the characters, rather than the story of Weep and the mysteries it had. Because Strange the Dreamer had that fairytale ambiance, we could believe that Lazlo and Sarai were in love despite the way they only had three nights together and didn't actually ever meet. Now, it is Muse of Nightmares's job to convince us of that love, of Minya's deep hatred, and even of Eril-Fane's despair and Thyon Nero's curiosity. Which, of course, leads us to another story in which the mysteries we hadn't even considered are blown wide open. Turns out, the world is much bigger than we expected it to be, and in fact the story is larger and more complicated than we ever could have believed.
Taylor begins this immense world building task by incorporating the story of Nova and Kora into the very beginning. While strange at first—to be introduced to characters so intimately whose names we've never heard before, in a world that looks nothing even remotely like Weep—the story of Nova and Kora ties in so deeply to Lazlo's and Sarai's and Minya's and Eril-Fane's stories, that the latter half's journeys would not be complete without the origin story of the former. It would be impossible to reconcile how Lazlo and his crew ended their story without understanding the sisterhood that tied Nova and Kora together when they were small girls. Because with Kora's and Nova's stories, we understand the origins of the gods, and thus the origins of Eril-Fane's necessity to rid his city of them, which snowballs into Minya's acute desire for vengeance at any cost. Each of these stories builds on top of the other, and without their foundation, they would crumble.
Thus, the threads of the stories all tie together. Minya's deep hatred is not only turned externally, to Eril-Fane and the god-slayers of humanity, but also towards herself, and her inability to have saved more children and to keep her family by her side. Eril-Fane finally gets the life that he had hoped for, and Thyon Nero even gets the backstory we'd all been curious about, as well as finally getting to sate his own curiosity. In my mind, the only truly unresolved question for me is how Lazlo and Sarai fell so deeply, so head-over-heels in love with one another. Maybe it's because I've been questioning instalove tropes recently, and defining ways in which the instalove trope is validated—for this duology, I would validate it by going back to the fairytale-ambiance of the duology itself, and in the way the story unfolds because the story is. However, I do wish we'd gotten more scenes, just one or two, of moments with Lazlo and Sarai that ended on something deeper than just physical attraction. More than anything, I wanted to see them truly connect on a deeper level in this novel, and I'm not sure I could point to a particular scene that makes me believe in their love as much as the entire duology makes me believe in miracles.
One of Laini Taylor's talents with this novel is her ability to stretch time, to make mere moments last pages and to compress years into sentences. This is a rare ability, one that astounded me time and time again. I swear the events of Muse of Nightmares occurred in 72 hours at most, and yet the book itself exceeds 500 pages and I was never bored for one second.
Fans of Strange the Dreamer will certainly be pleased with how Muse of Nightmares solves some of smaller mysteries we'd forgotten to be curious about: Weep's original name and the origin and purpose of the Wraith were two such reveals that pleased me immensely, as while they were somewhat forgettable in the context of Lazlo's journey, they always stayed at the back of my mind.
This book concludes the Strange the Dreamer duology, but Laini Taylor has a plethora of other works! You can find more of her works at lainitaylor.com!
*This review can also be found on my Goodreads page*
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