Review: Muse of Nightmares

Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I could've done with a reread of Strange the Dreamer before tackling Laini Taylor's latest, especially given that the first book came out over a year and a half ago and I kinda forgot most of what happened. Well, to be fair, that first book was baroque as hell and, dare I say, a little self-indulgent in its weirdness. And in hindsight, it really does feel like a major case of Prolonged Prologue leading up to Muse of Nightmares, which I feel is the story Laini Taylor really wanted to tell. She just had to set up the world first, and maybe got a little carried away in the process. But here, we get a story that, while not entirely divorced of its predecessor's severely bloated overlength issues, still gives us some very high stakes indeed. Not for nothing am I reminded why I've used Taylor's books as comp titles in my own queries. Especially her Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, but this book especially plays out in a few ways like my own Blue Monday. No spoilers, of course, but I'll tell you that it's one of the sweetest tragic love stories I've seen yet this year - and I just saw The Crimes of Grindelwald, which reminds me that I've got to review that one next. I'll just close out with a little bit of hope that, like with V.E. Schwab's Vengeful, this one actually proves to be the end of a duology. I'm not sure my heart can take any more nastiness happening to these characters!

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