Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor

Summary from Goodreads:

Sarai has lived and breathed nightmares since she was six years old.

She believed she knew every horror and was beyond surprise.

She was wrong.

In the wake of tragedy, neither Lazlo nor Sarai are who they were before. One a god, the other a ghost, they struggle to grasp the new boundaries of their selves as dark-minded Minya holds them hostage, intent on vengeance against Weep.

Lazlo faces an unthinkable choice—save the woman he loves, or everyone else?—while Sarai feels more helpless than ever. But is she? Sometimes, only the direst need can teach us our own depths, and Sarai, the Muse of Nightmares, has not yet discovered what she's capable of.

As humans and godspawn reel in the aftermath of the citadel's near fall, a new foe shatters their fragile hopes, and the mysteries of the Mesarthim are resurrected: Where did the gods come from, and why? What was done with thousands of children born in the citadel nursery? And most important of all, as forgotten doors are opened and new worlds revealed: Must heroes always slay monsters, or is it possible to save them instead?

Love and hate, revenge and redemption, destruction and salvation all clash in this astonishing and heart-stopping sequel to the New York Times bestseller, Strange the Dreamer.

Review:

I am a big fan of this author. I love her writing style. I love her characters. And I super love her insane imagination. Laini Taylor is another person I imagine to be incredibly interesting. How does one come up with this stuff? How? Her world building is so impressive, I sometimes have dreams that take place in her fictional worlds.

That being said, this is probably my least favorite book by her so far. I still enjoyed it and it and rated it high because let’s face it, Laini Taylor not at her best, still knocks almost all other YA fantasy writers out of the hemisphere. Her character development and imagination were still epic. I also super appreciated getting a series to conclude in 2 volumes instead of 3.

So what’s my deal? Well, it was way to easy to put down. And it was way too long. I usually don’t mind long books, but this one just felt too much. So much is drawn out and takes place around this one pivotal moment, but it takes half the book to get there. In other words, half of the book (the first half) felt way too drawn out and over-explained. I definitely enjoyed the second half of the book better.

However, when I finally go to the good stuff in the second half, everything almost happened too fast. It felt like a year to get to this one big moment, earlier. And then an enormous amount of action transpires throughout the rest at rapid speed.  The pacing was off.

It took me two weeks to read this monster! Normally, I DNF books that take that long. I kept going because I wanted answers. And I knew this was the conclusion and that I’d get some. Thankfully, I got all the answers by the end, and it was worth the long read. Let me re-phrase my earlier statement: It took me 2 weeks to get through the first half of the book, and one sitting to read the rest. I also grew to hate certain points of view (like the human friend/old enemies of Lazlo –I ended up mostly skimming those chapters.

Taylor does masterfully connect all the dots at the end. Literally all of the dots that I didn’t even knew could be connected were all explained out in a good way. And I found myself going, “Ohhhhh!” I loved the rescue missions. I loved the arguments. I loved the bickering. I loved the romance. I loved the interwoven stories and histories of this crazy, crazy world. I just wish the editor would have cut out maybe a quarter of the beginning…All in all, I still rate this high and give it an 8/10.