Muse of Nightmares

Overall I really liked the conclusion of this duology. It was an engaging read with great characters and a really intriguing world. The ending was satisfying, where all of the characters basically go off to have more grand adventures.

The book suffers a bit from being too short and cramming in too many points of view. I loved the world building, but there is so much left unexplored, especially considering the introduction of infinite other dimensions. They also briefly mention that the portals eventually led to some sort of dark world, that almost destroyed the universe? So they should maybe worry about that at some point? On the bright side I loved most of the characters, so the many POV shifts weren't always a negative, but I was often left feeling kind of short changed, I would just get to know and love a character only to switch to someone else.

Minya is consistently annoying through the first half of the book (not helped by how the narrator acts out her yelling)- but I liked how her story arc was resolved.

There were also some missed opportunities. A lot of mysteries (such as how did baby Lazlo escape Weep? What happened to all of the missing children? Where did the citadel and Mesarthim come from?) are revealed in quick info dumps, almost as an aside to the reader, to the point where I'm not even sure if the main characters actually know the answers to these questions. Also, Sparrow discovers she can heal and revive corpses, undoubtedly a highly useful skill. She brings back Eril-Fane and Azareen. It seemed like the natural progression of the story would be for her to then use that gift to ‘fix' Sarai. Imagine a scene where they go back to the Citadel, lay Sarai's body in the garden, and anxiously wait and see if Sparrow's gift is powerful enough to perform this miracle. Imagine Lazlo and Sarai's joy as her body is reawakened. But instead they cremate her body early in the book?

I felt like Lazlo and Sarai's saccharine love scenes were my least favorite parts of the book. I loved Lazlo in the beginning of Strange the Dreamer, he is such an interesting character. But I feel like his personality is subsumed by the romance plot as soon as he meets Sarai.

Also, I thought the reveal that Skathis was interdimensionally selling the children was nonsensical. He has an immensely powerful gift - if he wanted to play god and amass treasures and torture and rape he could do that without a weird nursery and human auction. And in what way were the buyers supposed to control and direct the extremely powerful children they were purchasing?