Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor
My rating: 5/5 cats
Wishes don’t just come true. They’re only the target you paint around what you want. You still have to hit the bulls-eye yourself.
i’m telling you up-front that i’m not going to write a “proper” review for this one. talking about the plot would sound like gibberish to someone who hasn’t read Strange the Dreamer, and if you are a person who has read Strange the Dreamer and aren’t planning to read this one, you should see a doctor about that.
this book made my jaw drop. more than once.
this is everything i want out of a book, out of a reading experience. it’s immersive, it’s well-constructed, it’s lyrical and dark and sad and sad and sad.
no one can touch laini taylor when it comes to setting up obstacles. they are traps within traps, and there were more than a few instances in this book where i was left stunned, wondering, “well, how you gonna get ‘em out of this one, lady?” and her solutions were never cop-outs. they were never cheap. there is always a cost.
this book is so intricate, so tight. i am dying to see laini taylor’s vision board.
for the record, one of my jawdrops was a result of her tying this series to her daughter of smoke and bone trilogy because WHO COULD HAVE ANTICIPATED THAT???? i got to that part around 3 am and just stilled, afraid to break the ‘oh my god, did that just happen?’ spell.
her writing gives me all the happy shudders. she’s light lacy prose and delicate touch, but then she’ll kick you in the heartballs when you’re least expecting it. she does love a dramatic declaration, she loves a foamy description, she loves writing sentences that you know fans are gonna get tattooed over and over.
Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music.
yeah, it’s borderline cheesy, but it rouses something. because she offsets the prettily poetic with such brutality, such blistering raw anguish, it’ll leave you hollow.
There comes a certain point with a hope or a dream, when you either give it up or give up everything else. And if you choose the dream, if you keep on going, then you can never quit, because it’s all you are.
that one’s maybe too big for a tattoo, but damn, it’s delicious.
i think, with this book, she has edged into first place in my “favorite YA authors” rankings. she’s probably in my top ten authors, the ‘of all-time’ edition. if there are any adult readers out there who are still reluctant to edge into YA because you’re all grown and that, grow up out of that mindset because this is better than most “adult” books i have read. it’s immediate, it’s compelling, she doesn’t offer easy answers, she’s a master of flow, and man – she knows how to end a chapter with a bang.
this one takes the foundation of Strange the Dreamer and develops it into entirely unexpected directions – offering redemption for some ‘misunderstood’ characters, introducing new badasses while keeping the old, and spackling on more context to things we thought we understood in the first book but now realize were only the iceberg’s tip. there’s a little too much of the breathless romance for my particular tastes, but i’m a ‘yuk, kissing’ kind of girl (in my reading), so i’m used to squinting past it.
it’s perfect. just perfect.
and even if this is the end of this story (although please god, no), i know that whatever she does next will be just as good. and if it is a continuation of this one that also brings in karou and them, i might explode into a large quantity of goo.
which is fine by me.
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perfect book. review to come.
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well, it turned out to be 2018, and despite how much my soul was howling for this book to be released, i haven’t managed to get to it until now. but i am just as excited now as i ever was.
bring it on, taylor!
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does “2016” mean i will be celebrating in three months or crying for fourteen?
