Adventures that might even involve other worlds. Although the story is wrapped up pretty well, Taylor dangles tantalizing possibilities for more adventures for these characters down the road. And the ending! It’s like a beautiful sunset after a long and harrowing storm. It’s these little character driven arcs within the main narrative that make the story so immersive and captivating. New characters Kora and Nova are sisters, whose parallel story merges with the main narrative in a surprising and tragic way. And Thyon, his haughty, standoffish superiority slowly giving way to loneliness and a desire to belong. His wife, Azareen, resigned to her husband’s fathomless guilt that leaves him unwilling to touch her.

Eril-Fane, the Godslayer, tormented by his past. The secondary characters are similarly crafted with equal depth and feeling.

“She hadn’t known she was crushed until she wasn’t, and she didn’t know she was fragmented until she became whole.” You learn a lot about Minya and the details of the Carnage that made her the creature she is, and the gradual revelations and insights are stunning. The primary plot involves Sarai, Lazlo, and the other godspawn trying to prevent Minya from destroying Weep, without her making good on her threat to release Sarai’s soul. But it is also healing and hope and redemption, all woven together and written with such beauty and magic that it makes you ache. It is horror, hate, and vengeance, and pain, suffering, and loss. Muse of Nightmares refers to Sarai, and the love story between her and Lazlo is all that is pure and incandescent in the universe, but this is primarily Minya’s story. And whenever you can, and however you can, make them suffer.” “This was what Minya knew: Have an enemy, be an enemy. The gods were monstrous their five remaining half-human spawn are isolated, wary, but otherwise generally innocent teenagers. If you need a refresher, the godspawn are the children of the foreign “gods” that came to Weep and systematically kidnapped, raped, and impregnated most of the city’s women. She has an army of ghosts, unwilling slaves to her will, that she plans to use to punish Weep for the massacre of the other godspawn children 15 years prior. Using Sarai’s continued existence as leverage, Minya is blackmailing Lazlo, newly discovered to be a rather powerful godspawn himself, into helping her exact her revenge on the inhabitants of Weep. And by “downer” I mean I was screaming “OHMYGOD WHY LAINI, WHHHHYYYYY?” Sarai is dead, her ghost bound to the world only through the temperamental will of Minya.

Strange the Dreamer ended on kind of a downer. You do everything I say, or I’ll let her soul go.” Source Strange the Dreamer spoilers ahead!

Muse of nightmares sequel