Just Finished Reading ... Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray

Lair of Dreams
by Libba Bray
To be published by Little, Brown
on August 25, 2015

Source: ARC giveaway from the publisher at BEA

Synopsis from Goodreads: After a supernatural showdown with a serial killer, Evie O'Neill has outed herself as a Diviner. Now that the world knows of her ability to "read" objects, and therefore, read the past, she has become a media darling, earning the title, "America's Sweetheart Seer." But not everyone is so accepting of the Diviners' abilities... Meanwhile, mysterious deaths have been turning up in the city, victims of an unknown sleeping sickness. Can the Diviners descend into the dreamworld and catch a killer?

My take: I got The Diviners at BEA 2012 and was beyond excited. But then, as the summer progressed, I kept looking at its hefty 592 pages and feeling ... intimidated. But I made a great choice: I downloaded the audiobook (which is excellent, narrated by January LaVoy) and listened to all 18 hours and 14 minutes of it.

In my review of The Diviners, I call it a "hefty historical suspense story featuring a large cast of characters, a great deal of historical detail, and a tricky 'intersecting lives' kind of plot structure, in which a bunch of different storylines slowly merge into one .. it takes some patience before all the various strands of the plot begin to weave together."

In Lair of Dreams, a lot of that weaving was already done, and things really begin to come together. I found this book a lot easier to jump into. Many of the characters were familiar friends, but there was also an intriguing new character, Ling Chan. She's half Irish, half Chinese, and shares a special talent with a returning character. Ling is a great addition to the story. Evie is back, with her slang a bit toned down, and seems headed for a love triangle. (It's also possible that she sees a love rectangle brewing and wants no part of it.)

Lair of Dreams also features a new villain, an intriguing supernatural character with a fascinating backstory. I really liked this aspect of the story.

With this second book, I feel like this series has really come together in a way that pleases me and makes me very excited to see how things wrap up. Yes, these books are long, but if you like historical fiction and supernatural stories, you should definitely give these books a try!