Review: Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

Title: Strange the Dreamer
Author: Laini Taylor
Series: Strange the Dreamer #1
Genre: Fantasy/YA/Romance
Publisher: Little, Brown
Publication Date: March 28th, 2017
Edition: Hardcover, 544 pages
Source: Won in Giveaway
Purchase/Pre-Order: Amazon US | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | BAM | iBooks

Synopsis:

    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.

Review:

This book took me far longer than I had hoped or wanted it to take me. Life just gets in the way like that sometimes. And I just didn't have the time, or sometimes energy, to just sit and read for hours like I wanted to. And this book isn't really the kind that I can or like to read just a few pages at a time. It's a book that I want to immerse myself in.

That being said, even though it's taken me nearly 5 months to finish (and I have started and finished other books during that time as well, smaller less "gripping" books than this one) I really loved this book. For a couple chapters, it wasn't grabbing my attention as much as I would have liked it too. That might have more to do with my mood than the book itself. But it didn't help when it came to the motivation to read the book when I did have the time to.

Lazlo is a very interesting character. I wasn't really expecting that exact plot twist near the end concerning him, though it also wasn't hugely shocking. I knew, from other reviews that there was something "special" about him. The reviews I watched/read never explicitly said what it was, but I knew it was something both a little shocking, but still expected.
It's not that it was poorly executed, it was hinted at after they got to Weep.

I am really struggling with reviewing this book, without giving things away. It, of course, has Laini Taylor's beautiful writing. But in some aspects, it lacks the allegory that DoSaB had. For me, it does anyway.

The Godspawn, they felt a little underdeveloped to me. They just didn't really get enough page time for me to really connect with them. I hope they get more page time in the next book.

While I do really love this book, the writing is beautiful, and the setting is so interesting. I felt that on some level, the full plot was overshadowed by the set up of getting to weep, and then the romance that surfaced once they got to Weep. Although, since I started this book in March and am only now finishing it, there is a chance that the disconnect I had with the book because I didn't have the time I wanted to just sit and read it, and read other smaller books instead, that I just wasn't as connected to the story as it required me to be to catch on.

All of that aside, I am really looking forward to the sequel. With this being a duology, I hope things are a bit more fast paced than they were in this book.