The Lost Dreamer
by Lizz Huerta
read by Elisa Melendez and Inés del Castillo
Macmillan Audio, 2022. 10 hours, 52 minutes.
Review written November 5, 2022, from a library eaudiobook
The Lost Dreamer says on Amazon that it’s book one of a duology, so fair warning that there’s not much resolution at the end of this book — it feels like half of a story.
But what we do have is full of rich world-building. Chapters alternate between two different teenage girls. Both of them are dreamers — at night, they experience “The Dream,” a world inhabited by spirits, where they learn truths about the waking world. When someone dies, they say they “returned to the Dream.”
Indir, the first featured character, is part of a family of Dreamers, and she serves at the Temple of Night in the capital city. But after she dreams to answer a question for the king on his deathbed, her ability to enter the Dream disappears. Is she still a Dreamer? And then when the new king brings fire warriors to the city and seems hostile to Dreamers, they all fear that he’s ushering in chaos.
Our alternating featured character is Saya. Nobody knows she’s a dreamer, because her mother won’t allow her to tell anyone. In fact, her mother uses Saya’s gift to act as a seer in the villages where they travel. But Saya begins to want to come into her own.
Both of the girls’ stories increase in danger. The way they come together toward the end of the book surprised me.
The Dream is fantastical, and both characters spend plenty of time there. The author does a good job conveying how the Dream and the world about it works. As well as making us worry about what’s coming to that world.
This review is only on the blog.
Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.
Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
What did you think of this book?