To be honest with you, guys. I never heard of the Dreamdark duology before, not until now. It was Christmas last year when I went on vacation in our province. Luckily, there is one bookstore there so I marauded it. Dreamdark was one of my haul that month. It stayed in my shelf for months until another December has come and I decided to read it.
When the ancient evil of the Blackbringer rises to unmake the world, only one determined faerie stands in its way. However, Magpie Windwitch, granddaughter of the West Wind, is not like other faeries. While her kind live in seclusion deep in the forests of Dreamdark, she's devoted her life to tracking down and recapturing devils escaped from their ancient bottles, just as her hero, the legendary Bellatrix, did 25,000 years ago. With her faithful gang of crows, she travels the world fighting where others would choose to flee. But when a devil escapes from a bottle sealed by the ancient Djinn King himself, the creator of the world, she may be in over her head. How can a single faerie, even with the help of her friends, hope to defeat the impenetrable darkness of the Blackbringer?
Magpie, together with her friend crows, roam the world to hunt for devils that had escaped their vessel. However, humans, unknowingly, open a vessel that contains the greatest of all evil, darkness. This darkness feeds on everything, faeries, humans and even devils. In her quest to return this Hungry One to its container, she met incredible people, including the dead, that uncover who she really is. Not an ordinary faery, they say.
Dreamdark is one of those works that are truly remarkable and magnificent. Laini Taylor is such a great author. She can weave a very interesting and effective plot that even the devils will like.
The world that Laini Taylor weaved is a true art. You can feel the world of Dreamdark as if it really exists. Though very magical, it’s very easy to say that this world exist. You will be left in awe on how the plot was magically interconnected. There are times when you encounter details that seem unimportant just to find out that it’s the golden key to the problem. Even I now that I’m writing this review cannot find a word that best suits to describe how artistic this novel is.
Her characters are not just characters to play the plot while it throws all the troubles to them. The story does not consist of only one or two kinds of being but many! Including a bald chicken, Strag, who was actually a slave of a warlock. If we speak of development, oh I very sure the development of the characters in this story is one of a kind. It’s not forced. It’s very humanistic, very real. The characters, though they are different from commons, act how an intelligent being should on every trouble they encounter. (The problem in most of today’s works is their characters acting inhuman. They act in ways that make them unreal and unbelievable.)
To cut out the criticism, this is how I imagined those crows that are always with Magpie. And also Strag the bald chicken...
I know! I know. They're are not crows at the first place but man, that’s how I picture them. And they are cute in that form.
Did I already say something about the artistic illustrations in the book? Neh? Well, here they are. Admit it, you like a book with tons of pictures.
And to summarize this rambling, I will say that Dreamdark: Blackbringer is a must MUST read. It is unique and gives new form to faeries we know. This is renaissance!
{Book 1 for 2012}
