Lani Taylor’s new novel Strange the Dreamer is a transportive journey through dusty shelves and living dreams.

When picking up a book by Laini Taylor, there are a few things that readers already know. You know that her prose will be lush, lyrical, and imaginative, that her constructed world will be vivid and weird. There will be conflicted heroes, painful mysteries, and tantalizing details of stories not yet told.

(And you know that you’re probably in for a world of hurt, in the best of ways.)

So as Taylor stretches her talents into Strange the Dreamer, her first major work since The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, the question is really how successfully she will manage her own talents. Dense with poetry and mythology, it’s easy to imagine the book bowing to the weight of its own ideals. Strange the Dreamer is not a light story, in any sense of the word.

The book begins with the origins of Lazlo Strange, a nameless orphan dropped into a grim life much smaller than his imagination. Finding work as a lowly librarian, Lazlo holds tightly to a passionate belief in the miracles of a mythical city called Weep. His life seems destined to be bounded by books and shelves, pens and paper, until his faith (and obsession) are rewarded.

A delegation from Weep marches straight out of legend, into his life — and they need help.

But the problem they face has its own opinions on the matter, and what Lazlo discovers in Weep is not exactly the story he has written himself.

It is a testament to Taylor’s skill (and very fortunate for us readers) that the book never stumbles in its arc or imagery. Strange the Dreamer does begin slightly ponderously, as Taylor lays the foundations for Lazlo’s very strange life. There is a deliberation in the early pages that can be frustrating, but is relatively short lived; once Lazlo’s upside-down hero’s journey begins, readers will never look back.

As she did in The Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Taylor is brilliant at blending magic with emotional truth. Half of her complicated cast lives in a fortress guarded by ghosts; the other half are all but ghosts themselves. Perhaps the strongest sections of Strange the Dreamer probe the impact of longstanding collective trauma, exploring fantastical horrors with very human consequences.

Across a canvas of monsters, gods, and men, Taylor studies the scars left behind by physical and psychic violence. Both sides of Weep’s bloody history have their say, raising painful questions with no easier answers than our own very complex reality.

And readers whose tastes turn toward the romantic will also find plenty to love in Strange the Dreamer. The book gives new meaning to the term “slow burn,” but if it’s feels you’re after, you’ll be sure to find them here… though they may not be the exact type you expected.

Sweeping and intimate, cruel and yet utterly lovely, Strange the Dreamerr is the kind of book readers will have to crawl out from underneath. Weighty as a nightmare and as transportive as the finest of fantasy, Laini Taylor’s new novel will leave readers with miracles on their minds — and hunger for the planned sequel waiting in their dreams.

Laini Taylor is going on tour!

Find Laini Taylor and learn more about Strange the Dreamer on her upcoming book tour:

March 29 — A Great Good Place for Books, Oakland, CA
March 30 — Kepler’s Books, San Franciso, CA
April 1 — TeenBookCon, Houston, TX
April 2 — Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN
April 3 — Anderson’s Bookshop La Grange, Chicago, IL
April 6 — Powell’s Books At Cedar Hills Crossing, Portland, OR
April 8 — San Antonio Book Festival, San Antonio, TX
April 22 — Arapahoe Library, Denver, CO
June 3 — BookCon, New York, NY
June 4 — Oblong Books & Music, Rhinebeck, NY

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor is available now from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and your local independent bookstore.