The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever.
What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?
Welcome to Weep.

I'd like this book to give me back the time I spent reading it, but I don’t want to spend another five minutes thinking about the terrible time I had with it. You know the book is BAD when it starts throwing you into a slump – I was in such a mood for reading and then, next thing I remember I was forcing myself to get through every damn page of this cluster-fuckery of letters. Strange the Dreamer was an epic letdown, and, the thought of hating a book that everyone seems to love fills me with immense sadness.

This book was, first of all, very hard to read. I can usually get through an impressive amount of bad characters and nonexistent plot if I like the author’s style and writing – which was not the case with this book. Taylor’s writing seems interrupted and disorganized with nonsensical POV switches in the middle of the sentence (this was like, a real thing, at the beginning of the sentence she describes Lazlo watching at the stars and skips to Sarai sleeping after the comma). Not to mention the everlasting note of monotony and indifference that made me genuinely disinterested in any aspect of this book.
Taylor’s pacing was probably one of the worst things that had happened to this book. The tremendous amount of time that it takes to get to a point where things actually start happening made me realize how little fucks I give about characters and what is going to happen to them. It takes them almost 200 pages to actually get to Weep, and then they are practically doing nothing until the last chapter. When the action started happening and things got to the point where they were supposed to be interesting, I was so numb from wanting those terrible descriptions to be over that I couldn’t care less about the plot twists – which were actually good and ending that wasn’t so bad itself!

When I put aside my hate for the writing, I see that I quite liked the worldbuilding and magic system. Weep is a city on the east, where two hundred years ago, Seraphim - also known as mesarthim, came down on Earth. They are godlike creatures with immense power who lived in a citadel that floats above Weep. For centuries, they tormented and abused people of Weep, stealing their wives and turning them half mad after taking their children, half-human, and half-god, also known as godspawns. Fifteen years ago, Eril – Fane killed every god and murdered their children to free people of Weep, but he never managed to get rid of the giant floating angel that shadows his city.

Lazlo Strange is an orphan boy who likes nothing more than getting lost inside his own thoughts. He is a huge bookworm and has probably memorized every single fact about the mysterious city of Weep. The day when his craziest dreams come true is the day Eril-Fane asks him to come with him to an expedition to Weep. Lazlo is probably the most boring and personality-less character I’ve ever encountered. I mean, what does he do – he reads and dreams? Wow. Even that cool plot twist at the end couldn’t make his character less lame. Sarai has something more to her, even though I still found her pretty boring. She is whiny and lets herself be defined by others way too easily. Sarai is a daughter of Eril-Fane and goddess of despair – Isagol. Her gift is an ability to invade and control people’s dreams – but don’t worry, she doesn’t use it to do anything badass or useful, she’d rather spend some time in Lazlo’s head, creating the world’s lamest case of insta-love.


The only character worthy of my notice was Minya – a 21-year-old daughter of Skathis with ability to control ghosts, trapped in a child’s body until she fulfills her vengeance over Eril-Fane. She was the only interesting person in this book and I would like to thank her for making bearable to read.