Reverie by Ryan La Sala
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I have to admit with this one I was swayed by the beautiful cover, but still it was a pretty interesting book. The concept was super compelling and although it was confusing I was able to manage to mostly keep up with the story. I’d say my favorite part was the scene where… oh wait, that’s a spoiler. Looks like I need to write in my spoiler icon.
Spoilers Below
Anyway, my favorite part was when Dr. Peony unleashes all the Reveries on each other and a creates a super crazy confusing new reality. That scene was totally epic and explains why someone blurbed it as a cross between The Magicians and Inception, neither of which I have seen except for the trailers XD. From personal experience, I’d say it was super similar to Dr. Strange which I have also been told has some similar imagery to Inception so¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
To go a bit in depth on the concept of the book, I really think it was an interesting idea, just badly executed, which made me a bit disappointed. Because Kane didn’t know anything about the world he was in, us (the readers) did not have much time to see any world building and that irked me. Personally, I would have liked a bit more description of how the Reveries worked. For example, do they encompass the entire world when they are active or just a small area. Also, what do the Reveries look like exactly from the outside of that small area. I might have missed a bit of explanation but, I seriously doubt and want more of it. That was something that I didn’t like very much about this book and really lowered my star rating for it.
I did like the characters of the book though, and the way the quartet’s power was the exact opposite of who they were (personality wise) was a super nice idea. Out of the four, Adeline was my favorite, and Ursula was cool, but she sent mixed signals as to whether she was a nervous person or not. With regards to the rest of the characters, I really liked Sophie, but I didn’t like the fact that she was constantly seen as a princess in distress. Lastly, one of the characters that really confused me was Dean. What I couldn’t understand was why he had white eyes in the reveries… It just made no sense to me. There were a few other things like that the kind of made me confused in regards to the characters, but that was the most prominent. Lastly, something I didn’t like was how little character arc there was. Kane literally made the same (big) mistake twice, even after he was brainwashed. No one grew, which is something in books I really can’t stand. The point of a story is to go from one place to another, not just physically, but actually most importantly in a mental way.
A few things about the story I really liked (since we just talked about the things I didn’t like), were the reveries. The first one was absolutely amazing and the way Kane had subtitles on the bottom on his vision made me (literally) bust out into laughter. I also really liked the concept of them (as I have repeated most likely 10 times so far in this review :D). I also really liked how they covered up the big reverie problem with the car crash. It was actually really refreshing to have that part completely revoked. So many authors don’t do that thing anymore, where they complete nullify an event that has been already cemented in a readers mind and I actually really liked it. Lastly, I really liked the cover as well, which was gorgeous!!! I really didn’t want to end on a down note about this book because it really wasn’t terrible, I just had a lot of suggestions.
In conclusion, I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone who wants an easy read. It requires a pretty big deal of concentration to understand, and isn’t suited to get people out of book slumps. I liked it a bit, but not enough to get five stars. Like I said earlier, it was a nice read, it just didn’t impress me at all.
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