Dreamhunter and Dreamquake by Elizabeth Knox.

These books are: bright, fresh, and creative.
Other elements: dreams, family, the greater good, government corruption, golem-esque creatures.
Read them: if you enjoy reading fantasy with interesting and unusual magic.
Overall rating: 7.5/10

I really enjoyed reading the Dreamhunter duet. First of all, they’re a duet: you get more than one book, but you don’t have to wade through a million pages to find out what happens. It also didn’t hurt that both books are finished and I had them at the same time: I feel like everything I start these days turns out to be part of an unfinished series.

My favorite thing about this little series is the work that Knox created. The concept of Dreamhunters is fascinating and felt really unique. A Dreamhunter is a person – the ability is inborn, you have it or you don’t – who has the talent to capture certain dreams. Once a dream is captured, a Dreamhunter has the ability to broadcast it: anyone sleeping near them as they dream the dream will experience it too. Some dreams are happy, some bittersweet, some terrifying. The intensity of the dream – and its aftereffects, if any – depends on the Dreamhunter’s skill.

The first novel, Dreamhunter, is about Laura and Rose, two young cousins born into a family of great Dreamhunters. In this book, Laura and Rose reach the age at which they’re going to be tested for Dreamhunter ability. This first novel primarily serves to introduce the reader to the characters and the world they live in, while also revealing that there may be nefarious things afoot behind the scenes. It becomes apparent that thing might not be quite as they seem.

In Dreamquake, the nefarious things that seemed to be coalescing in Dreamhunter become urgent and are addressed by our heroines. That’s an extremely vague overview, but I don’t want to give anything away! There is adventure and intrigue and magic. And family secrets, and ball gowns.

The only thing I didn’t love about the Dreamhunter duet was the ending. It was just a little too abrupt and a little too complicated; I felt like I didn’t quite have time to be convinced of what was happening before the book ended. I was trying just now to review the final chain of events in my head and I don’t think I ever made enough sense out of it to retain it. It was disappointing to get to the end of such a great duet and not feel like the final chapter lived up to the preceding storylines.

The Dreamhunter duet is still very much worth reading, though. Well-written, unique fantasy is too valuable a commodity to ignore just because the ending wasn’t quite what I’d hoped for .

And if any of you follow my Book Riot posts: Dreamquake is the book I was reading when the prosciutto incident occurred.

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