Initial Draw: ☆☆☆
Character Development: ☆☆☆
Plot/Writing Style: ☆☆☆
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐
From the cover:
"Seven years ago, Tanvi was spirited away to the subterranean realm of Nagalok, where she joined the ranks of the dream runners: human children freed of all memory and emotion, charged with harvesting mortal dreams for the consumption of the naga court.
Venkat knows a different side of Nagalok. As apprentice to the influential Lord Nayan, he shapes the dream runners' wares into the kingdom's most tantalizing commodity. And Nayan has larger plans for these mortal dreams: with a dreamsmith of Venkat's talent, he believes he can use them to end a war between nagas and their ancient foe, the garudas.
But when one of Tanvi's dream harvests goes awry, she begins to remember her life on Earth. Panicked and confused, she turns to the one mortal in Nagalok who can help: Venkat. And as they search for answers, a terrifying truth begins to take shape - one that could turn the nagas' realm of dreams into a land of waking nightmare."
📚📚📚
This book is a study in contrasts and contradictions. For example, beautiful world building and imagery...but lacking character development. Tons of detail and focus on the mythology of the nagas and garudas...but not enough information for readers (or at least this reader) to really have a grasp on what's happening. I'm curious if someone reading who was more familiar with the naga/garuda stories would have enjoyed this book more having all that background understanding of what the story was inspired by, because the best way I can describe reading this book is that it was like being the person going to see a movie version of a book NOT having read the book. It might still be a decent story...but you're never going to distill all the minutia and little details of a several hundred page long book into a couple hours long movie.
I can't decide if it's better to talk about the things I liked or the things that I didn't first...compromise, alternate?
Thing I loved: All the rich descriptions of Nagalok. The dreamstones dream runners use to collect dreams, all the decor and nature of the realm, the luxurious food, the colorful, beautifully-made clothing...painted a gorgeous picture.
Thing I didn't love: For such a long book, very little actually happened. Like...the synopsis is basically the entire book. Tanvi freaking out because she's starting to remember things and Venkat vacillating between how he can best take care of the dream runners and wanting to be completely loyal to Nayan takes up probably eighty percent of the book, with very little progress actually being made, and there's really no clear "this is the lurking danger" or "here is what you should be concerned about as a reader. It's all very muddy.
Thing I liked: Asha. Very assertive and adventurous. She was super bold and by far the character whose actions and motivations made the most sense. I would be friends with Asha.
Things I didn't like: The other characters, even Tanvi and Venkat, felt so underdeveloped, and it made a lot of what was happening fall flat. I think part of the issue was too many characters, or maybe spending too much time on the same plot points, which meant less time for developing characters. We were introduced to several characters who seemed to be intended as an important part of the story but only showed up a couple times, and even with Tanvi and Venkat, they spent so little time together and their preexisting relationship was never established, so then all of a sudden it was like "oh, they're super into each other, and Venkat has always been enamored with Tanvi and how fiery she was before she went through Dream Runner initiation!" And I was like ....I have seen no evidence to support any of this. What?
So. Anyway. I don't know. Do I think this was a BAD book? No. But to be honest, both this and Shveta Thakrar's last book, Star Daughter, feel like they started with an incredible idea but no clear direction for how to execute that idea. Read it if you want to, but if you don't...you don't.
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