“Two hundred years ago, there was a storm.” Just throw my 2017 anticipation list away, because Strange the Dreamer was all I needed this year.

Not A Court of Wings and Ruin, not Tyrant's Throne, not Skullsworn, not All the Crooked Saints, not The Chosen, not anything. I don't see how anything I'll read in 2017 can beat this. Yet, this book feels unratable, because how do you rate perfection instead of just feeling at a loss of words because of its awe? This book is so much greater than five stars. In fact, the last time I felt this was back in 2015 with The Name of the Wind, and the same feeling of guilt from giving other books five star ratings is here again. This isn't the type of book to come around often. The feeling while reading this is indescribable, but the closest word choice would have to be pure bliss. This is that rare type of book that, while reading, is a constant reminder of why you fell in love with reading in the first place. “On the second Sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city of Weep, a girl fell from the sky. Fall into a mythical world of dread and wonder, moths and nightmares, love and carnage.Have you ever loved a book so much that it completely fills your soul, warms your heart, and heals your broken pieces? In this sweeping and breathtaking novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the New York Times bestselling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, the shadow of the past is as real as the ghosts who haunt the citadel of murdered gods. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? And who is the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo's dreams? Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. Since he was just five years old, he's been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around-and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared his dream chose poorly. From National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor comes an epic fantasy about a mythic lost city and its dark past.

Strange the dreamer by laini taylor