Lair of Dreams

Book Title: Lair of Dreams

Author: Libba Bray

Series: The Diviners #2

Date Started: August 15th 2019

Date Completed: August 17th 2019

Genres: Fantasy, Historical, Mystery, Romance, Horror

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Five Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thank you NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

Book two of the Diviners series down, and I'm still rolling ahead to devour the next one. With her television-size cast of characters, places and plot lines, Bray is shaping up to be quite the storyteller as she keeps expanding her world with remarkable control. Slightly pretentious analysis aside, Lair of Dreams was just as enjoyable as the first installment in the series, even if it depended more on the friction between characters than to their plight.

You gotta love some light-hearted romance where the girls have just as much self-respect as they deserve; you gotta love some creepy ghosts making things go bump in the night; you gotta love the roaring twenties and its dreamers trying to make their way in it. Add a flair of fantasy and you have the Diviners, a group of gifted young people converging closer and closer as something wicked this way comes. It was really exciting that we got to expand into Chinatown in Lair of Dreams, and I'm still impressed by how well balanced the narrative is between so many characters and cultures and their individual subplots. It's why I keep referencing television writing because each character's personal arc often seems more at the forefront of their chapters than the overall plot does - which has its pros and cons.

The Diviners, the first book, relied a lot on the Naughty John plotline to glue everything together; Lair of Dreams is far less concerned with its ghost story. Instead, it drops hints upon hints of what's to come: foreboding FBI agents, missing mothers, traitors in family homes, suspicious premonitions, surprising connections weaving everyone together since before they were born. The 'dreaming killer' plotline is still there, and ultimately resolved, but it felt like it was on a backburner. Honestly, this was mostly fine - it meant less momentum but we have enough investment in the characters are this point for it to work - but my one hesitation lies in if whatever's coming is coming fast enough? I want to sink my teeth into this big conspiracy hiding behind them instead of popping back and forth between a ghost story, a melodrama as well as the 'ultimate test' that's approaching.

But until then, I am still totally occupied with the Diviners themselves. Evie (who seems to be the protagonist, in my mind, just from the structure of the series) continues to be fascinating selfish and irrational but complex and heroic. But it's also really nice that each character gets to take the limelight for a bit because you do feel affection for them all. It's interesting that quite a few people are in different power positions than they used to be, and constantly evolving. Evie has a radio show, Sam's living well off the museum, Theta's rising in the ranks on stage, Henry's changing his dreams, Mabel's standing up for herself, Jericho's starting to reach out of his comfort zone. It keeps things moving even when the main story isn't so much in focus, and mostly importantly it makes us root for these developing characters because they feel so much more real.

Guess who's already bought the next book and is devastated she has to wait until February for the last book? This girl. I've raced through these novels pretty fast, but I don't feel like I've exhausted them of their entertainment just yet. They're reasonably long books but they're so easy to topple into that it feels like the blink of an eye, and that's really what books are supposed to do. Small flaws aside, Bray has reached the heights of escapism and that's all we readers can ask for.