Hello bookbabes! How’s life been? Mine has been just… so… crazy lately. University, why doth thou make everything due the last week of classes along with all of the finals in class? Why?
Anyways. Between all the essay writing and the studying… I somehow found time to read this mammoth. And I have many, many things to say about it, so shall we just get into it?
(also, can we talk about how gorgeous this dust jacket is??? I know there is another version of it too that is stunning as well… man, it’s rare we get a UK/CAN version and a US version that are both stunning)
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around – and Lazlo Strangee, 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 bard 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?
In this sweeping and breathtaking new novel […] the shadow of the past is as real as the ghosts who haunt the citadel of murdered ghosts. Fall into a mythical world of dread and wonder, moths and nightmares, love and carnage.
welcome to Weep.
I don’t even know what to say right now. This book… is everything. EVERYTHING. I am not even slightly confused as to what my favourite read in 2017 was. SPOILER it’s this one! Hands down.
“Sarai,” he said, and if ravids purred it might sound something like the way he said her name. “You must see. I want you in my mind.“
Let’s start with the basics: the writing itself. Instantly, I was taken by this lyrical and flowing, absolutely stunning writing. And, having gone into it not knowing really… anything about it, at all, it swept me up, and no matter if I stopped reading for a period of time (because I was reading this as a break from my terribly busy university life… like one hour every two days maybe) it was so easy, SO EASY, to slip back into the world. It was like slipping back into a dream. (see what I did there? see? LOL okay)
And the story was immediately intriguing.
“What if it works, but my terrors come, too?”
Lazlo shrugged. “We’ll chase them away, or else turn them into fireflies and catch them in jars.” He wasn’t afraid. Well. He was only afraid it wouldn’t work. Anything else they could handle, together. “What do you say?”
OKAY.
So I finally understand why people can’t explain this book. There is so much going on, there’s so much richness to the world of Weep and the Citadel… the characters! Oh, the characters. I’m so intrigued by those like Thyon Nero because we don’t even scratch the surface of these characters. I thought originally that this story was going to be centred around Thyon and Lazlo, but noooooo. I was so very wrong. Well, not quite… slightly right? Maybe? If you’ve read it, you know. But okay, besides the really side characters of the faranji who’ve been recruited by the Godslayer….
Wait. Okay. Here’s the most basic run down of the story, because this could get confusing.
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So Lazlo is an orphan who just by chance gets to leave where he’s lived all his childhood to drop something off at the library – and he doesn’t leave. He loses himself in the shelves (something us book worms can attest to, right?). Fast forward a few years and he’s now a man and a junior librarian, and he’s so intensely a part of the place – skin and hearts (yes, they have two hearts. Read the book to find out). One day, Thyon Nero walks in requesting Lazlo’s entire works (Lazlo has been studying the Unseen City – a mythical place that has remained untouched for decades in the ancient volumes, a place whose name has been erased/stolen from everyone’s minds when he was a boy, now it’s called Weep).
Soon after Thyon has read and essentially stolen Lazlo’s dream, Weep comes to them. The Godslayer and his warriors – the Tizerkane – have come to recruit intellects to help them with two things: rebuilding the city’ss knowledge base, and helping them with something very mysterious. He won’t tell them until they get there because they won’t believe him. This intrigues everyone. Of course, Thyon gets to go, speaking through what he learned from Lazlo’s work, and he is the Golden Son or whatever who can actually turn metal into gold like Alchemists are meant to be able to do, thanks to help from Lazlo. That’s a whole other layer.
Lazlo, a lowly librarian, does not believe he will get a chance to go. He thinks his dream is entirely gone. But with a surge of courage, he steps forward, speaks in their maiden language, and is taken on by the Godslayer as his personal secretary. Lazlo’s dream comes true – he gets to go to Weep. And things are strange about Weep – even Lazlo, dubbed Strange the Dreamer, can’t believe that the things about Weep are exceeding his wildest dreams.
Fabled Weep, unseen no longer.
From the top of the Cusp, where the Godslayer’s delegation stood, a trail descended into the canyon of the River Uzumark, with the white of demonglass gradually giving way to the honey-colored stone of cliff faces and natural spires and arches, and to the green of forests so dense that their canopies looked, from above, like carpets of moss one might walk across. And the waterfalls might have been curtains of pale silk hung from the cliff tops, too numerous to count. With its waterfall curtains and carpets of forest, the canyon was like a long and beautiful room, and Weep a toy city – a gilded model – at its center. The chocking sureality of the citadel – the sheer size of the thing – played havoc with the mind’s sense of scale.
I won’t say much more than that, and trust me. That’s not even a spoiler. That happens in the first few chapters, maybe. It’s barely scratching the surface.
There’s also Sarai and the other Godspawn, and the truth behind what happened to the city of Weep fifteen years ago.
Lazlo… ugh, be STILL my HEART. That boy. Is so pure. So desperately willing and kind to help everyone he can, at no personal gain. There were such tender moments between him and Sarai that… I felt my heart swell immediately. Like the Grinch’s, you know how it swelled three sizes? Yeah. Like that. But more. Lazlo takes the cake for book boyfriends, my friends. Ugh. I don’t… he is just so protective, and curious and he cares so much…
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Just. Go. Read. The. Book. Go. NOW.
Sarai… my heart aches for that girl. Her and her ‘siblings,’ Minya, Ruby, Feral, and Sparrow, were the only survivors of the Carnage. All because of Minya, who saved the four babies from the fate of the Gods. Each Godspawn have a gift, their own magic, which help keep them alive without being seen by humans. Sarai was the only one who visited the population of Weep – through their dreams. She kept the fear alive in them, from that fateful day so they – the humans – wouldn’t come find them. Everything changes when the Godslayer and his recruits return. Everything.
Not really, perhaps, but truly. That is to say, they might not have really kissed, but they had truly kissed. Everything about this night was true in a way that transcended their bodies.
but that didn’t mean their bodies wanted to be transcended.
The ache.
Mmmmmmmmmmm. Just go get it. Go read it.
There is so much to this book. There are SO MANY quotes I flagged within this book… I just can’t choose a lot of them because they’re major spoilers. I tried to keep the ones I used in this book review spoiler free… and slightly intruiging? Yeah.
Oi, Laini? Ms Taylor? Can we please please please pleassseeeee have the next one? Like now? Please?
Ughhhh this is why I hate reading series without all of them out because I just can’t wait for the next one. There’s too much to knowwwwww!
A page had turned. A new story was beginning. You had only to look at Lazlo to know it would be brilliant.
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Alright, so in case you didn’t notice, this book is all I will recommend now for books. I cannot recommend it MORE. It’s nothing like I’ve ever read. The concept is SO AMAZING.
So yeah. 5/5 stars, easily. If I could give more I would. Hell, it’s 10/5 stars. It’s 100/5 stars. Just. SO. GOOD.
Happy Reading my book babes!
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