A dreamy librarian journeys to a lost city and meets, in his dreams, the blue goddess everyone there has reason to fear.
- Score
- 82.1
- Spice
- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️Sweet
- POV
- multi
- Ending
- HEA / HFN
Tropes
Content warnings
Curated signals, not an exhaustive guarantee.
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What readers think
Readers overwhelmingly praise Laini Taylor's prose as one of the most distinctive and beautiful voices in YA fantasy — lush, poetic, and utterly transporting, with world-building that feels genuinely original rather than derivative of standard high-fantasy templates. Lazlo Strange is frequently highlighted as a rare, refreshingly non-toxic male protagonist: bookish, kind, wonder-struck, and compelling. The first half in particular earns near-universal love for its sense of childlike adventure and library atmosphere. The most consistent criticism is that the romance develops into instalove territory once Lazlo arrives in Weep — some readers find it difficult to believe the emotional depth of Lazlo and Sarai's bond given its speed and dream-mediated nature. Pacing in the second half divides opinion: some love the shift into the Citadel's claustrophobic godspawn drama, others feel the plot momentum stalls. The cliffhanger ending is widely noted as brutal and divisive. Goodreads places it around 4.1 stars across 300,000+ ratings, a strong consensus for a polarising prose-forward book.
Read it if
- · Readers who prioritise transportive, literary prose and mythic world-building over fast plot pacing
- · Fans of gods-and-mortals forbidden romance with genuine emotional weight and melancholy
- · YA fantasy readers who want a bookish, gentle male protagonist and a story that interrogates trauma, memory, and guilt
Skip it if
- · You are fatigued by instalove — the romantic connection develops very quickly and through dreams, which some readers find hard to earn
- · You need plot-driven momentum throughout — the second half is more character- and emotion-focused than action-focused
- · The book ends on a severe cliffhanger with no self-contained resolution; readers who want a complete story in one volume should read both books back-to-back
If you liked this
- · For fans of Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor — the same author's earlier work, sharing lyrical prose, star-crossed mythic romance, and a hidden world with a brutal history
- · For fans of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern — similarly dreamy, atmospheric writing that prioritises mood and wonder over conventional plot velocity
- · For fans of An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir — forbidden romance across a deadly divide, morally complex power structures, and a protagonist discovering a hidden identity
- · For fans of Caraval by Stephanie Garber — lush, sensory world-building and a romance that blurs the line between dream and reality
In this series
Part of Strange the Dreamer — read in order:
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