 Guys, look what showed up in the mail! See, this is the only thing that I've ordered from Book Depository in a little while, so I know exactly what's in here, and I wanted to do the unboxing and, like, gush about this book. Cause, oh my god, this is not a spoiler for your review. Let's just be clear. Here there be spoilers. I don't think I've ever been this excited to open a book before. Especially because I have already read, but, gosh, I just, I just, pages, pages. But god, do I love this cover. God, do I love this book. Oh my goodness. I don't know if I've said this out loud yet, but this is Strange the Dreamer by Lady Taylor. And it comes with a little Book Depository bookmark, which I think is really cute. It's got a little hijabi lady, and a guy in a fedora, and an astronaut, and a robot. He looks like an ood, but I can't, I'm not quite sure if he's an ood. There's a skeleton, and a ghost, and a soldier, and a guy with a howlard. That might be Phineas Gage. That might be Phineas Gage. But yeah, this is really cute. So I love, I love the UK cover. I used Book Depository specifically to buy the UK cover, but I thought I was gonna get the blue pages. Ah, but it's embossed. Oh, that's so cool. And if you take off the dust cover, it's got this beautiful blue binding. I'm gonna kick out your little moth. I am really sad about the blue pages, though. I really don't think it's possible to discuss this book without spoilers. This book, more than any other book, you must begin with a clean slate. And I don't know, maybe like an amorphous sense of curiosity. So heed the title of this video and know that here there be spoilers. So when I was around page 250, I got on Book Depository and I bought this book. That does not happen. It does not. I do not buy books that I have not read completely. I do not buy books that I'm not 100% sure about. But I bought this book because I was so enamored of it. Oh my goodness. I started to write what I thought was a review of this book and it very quickly spiraled out of control. I don't think I can review this book. I love this book too much. I cannot be objective. I want to read you a paragraph that I wrote when I thought I was writing a review for this book. It'll show you a little bit of how my mind was exploding after I read this. It has been 24 hours since I finished Strange the Dreamer by Lainey Taylor. Immediately upon finishing, I tweeted about my demise at its hand and then got on the train to go watch the Tonys and play board games with some friends. The next day I went to work. I am writing this at work and I am still not okay. But this is not a book that I will recommend to everyone I meet. All of my co-workers and friends with the abandon of one possessed. This book is like a secret, a precious idea to be nurtured and cherished and shared with only the ones who will appreciate its rarity, its beauty. Yes, this book has made me a poet and I apologize. Trigger warnings for this book? There is a lot of discussion of rape, both physical and mental. The brutal murder of children and all the costs to a nation that is conquered. There are no flashbacks, all instances are discussed in the past tense, but the actions and the consequences remain horrifying. The book opens with a lush, vivid, vicious tragedy. A girl is dead and still terrifying. A reminder of things best forgotten and impossible to forget. Spoiler the first. Strange the Dreamer? The title? Yeah, it's not just the title of the book. There is a character. The main character's name is Laszlo Strange and he is a dreamer. Therefore he is Strange the Dreamer. The worst part about this one is that it happens again in the book. When Errol Fane presents the problem, he says only the shadow of our dark time still haunts us. And Laszlo is over here thinking, oh, like maybe haunts is the key word here. Or dark time. He never thought that it was shadow. I both hate and love it when authors are self aware. This is a story of impasses. For 200 years, the citizens of Leap were at an impasse until Errol Fane couldn't take it anymore. And then for the next 15 years, those same citizens were at a different impasse. Not better. At the heart of this book there's another impasse. Iron will set against newfound love, change versus that which cannot change. That Laszlo Strange can think around anything. He is a dreamer of the First Order. One of my favorite things about this book is that Sarai falls in love with Laszlo's dreams. Their feelings for one another are fledgling and full of hope. And the first time that Laszlo gets to hold her in his arms, she is already dead. I am not okay. That by the way was the second spoiler. It's kind of a big deal. Okay guys, the entire concept of Minya just ruined me, okay? Minya is the little girl that, well, she's not really a little girl. She is in the shape of a six-year-old. Her physical form remains a six-year-old because she gave so much of herself that day. So much of her soul. And even when Sarai betrays her, she still traps her soul before it can even ask. Because she's not going to let anything to her family apart. She did everything for these four babies that she could save. And oh my god, the entire concept of Minya! It didn't even occur to me when I was reading the passage that not only was she stuck in the physical form of when the carnage happened, she's stuck in that day, in that trauma, constantly repeating it. The intricacies of Laszlo's weep. All of the stories that he has ever learned. They live in his dream weep and he just knows so many stories. And Sarai noticing the stories in his dreams. Even the ones he's not actively dreaming about, they just exist there. And there are stories that she doesn't know. Eryl Fane and Azurine. She loves him so much and he is not capable of loving anyone anymore. He's been the whole middle part of the book trying to piece that together and you just can't. You just don't have enough background. And then all of a sudden it makes sense and you're just hit with the tragedy. It's like Lady Taylor just punched into your chest and ripped out your heart. One of my favorite things, I mean they're all my favorite things, but she takes the time to define words that aren't really used in the tally of the story but are very, very integrated into the story itself. One of those things is the bastard God that grants your dreams to someone else. And you start to like feel out as the book goes in that the dreams that are going to be taken are lazlows because all he has are dreams and they're going to be granted to someone else, probably someone less deserving. This naturally happens but it's two fold. The bastard God is a bastard twice over because not only does he grant lazlows dreams to the alchemist but he grants the alchemist's dreams to lazlows. Strange only ever wanted to see his precious unseen city. The alchemist wanted to rise above all men. He aspired not only to greatness but to godhood. And while the alchemist got to find, to discover the unseen city, lazlows got to be a god. It was the last thing he expected and it doesn't solve any of his problems. It is utterly impossible for me to select a single sentence, a single paragraph to give you a feeling of this book. And yes, if you have watched this video to this point, you should probably have read the book because remember, here there will be spoilers. But I just want to read you the prologue, so here we go. On the second sabbath of twelfth moon, in the city of wheat, a girl fell from the sky. Her skin was blue, her blood was red. She broke over an iron gate crimping it on impact and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer, swooning on a lover's arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point protruding from her sternum glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as her ghost shook loose and torched ginger buds ringed out of her long hair. Later they would say these had been hummingbird hearts and not blossoms at all. They would say she hadn't shed blood but wept it, that she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them upside down and dying, that she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would say a flock of moths came frantic and tried to lift her away. That was true, only that. They hadn't a prayer though, the moths were no bigger than startled mouths of children and even dozens together could only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged, soddened with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked gust came blasting down the street, the earth heaved underfoot, the sky spun on its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through the billowing smoke and the people of Weep had to squint against it, blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter. There had been an explosion. They might have died all and easily, but only this girl had shaken from some pocket of the sky. Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson, her pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and dead. She was also blue, blue as opals, pale blue, blue as corn flowers or dragonfly wings or a spring, not summer sky. Some wonder, someone screamed, the scream drew others. The other screamed true, not because the girl was dead, but because the girl was blue and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped reeling and the earth settled and the last flume spluttered from the blast site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to voice a virus of the air. The blue girl's ghost gathered itself and perched, bereft upon a spear point tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and gazed mournfully up. The screams went on and on. And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred as though awakened by the tumult and slowly lifted its great horned head. I'm not crying, you're crying. I told you this book gave me feels. When is the next book coming out? I would like it right now, please. The Catch-22 there is that I know that the next book won't make me feel any better. But I still need it. I need it so bad. Lady Taylor, bless your weird mind. Keep writing weird stuff. I love it. I have so much respect for the person who wrote the dust cover for this book because they actually, like, managed to kind of tell you what it's about, still without telling you what it's about. So please, if you haven't read this book, please read this book and then come cry with me on the internet.