Dreams and Shadows: A Novel
By C. Robert Cargill I selected this book because it was being touted as perfect for fans of Neil Gaiman and Lev Grossman. Well I love Neil Gaiman and I like Lev Grossman's Magicians series enough, so I should be the target audience for this one, right? Well, I suppose I can see why they feel that anyway but it just didn't do it for me. The problem, for me anyway, is that it starts out promising and then... It just started to feel like a chore to read this sucker. As in, since I got this through Vine as opposed to purchasing it, I really had to review it and I didn't want to say "I couldn't finish this" as I have yet to do that, if I say I'll read and review your book, I will, even if my heart isn't in it... and mine was not in this one at all -- I latched onto any and every distraction I found while reading this as an excuse not to read.
The thing is, I really should have loved this book. It's got fairies (not all of them are nice), it's got dijnn (yup wishes are granted), angels, demons, it's got a bar for such creatures to gather, it's got precocious human children all mixed up with these supernatural beings (namely two of them - Ewan who was forced into their world and Colby who all but begged to be a part of it).
The first half of the book follows these two boys in their younger years. Ewan is raised by the fairies and is told that he will be made a fairy upon reaching a certain age, he'll be quite special. Colby, in discovering their world, learns that they haven't been quite honest with Ewan about what his role in the fairy world is. This leaves Colby to figure out how to fight against a whole world of magic while he's just one boy with a dijnn by his side.
Then there's the second half of the book - The two human boys are now young men. One has forgotten his young life, all of that magical paranormal stuff? Gone from his memory. The two are still friends though. Ewan is a musician. Colby is working in a bookstore. Their lives as normal as they can be considering magic is all around them, always threatening them. Every person, item, location -- it can be their undoing and only one of the young men knows it, though someone wants revenge on the man without the memory so he might be forced to remember...
I just honestly didn't care if either of them was in danger or not. Would they or wouldn't they get a happily ever after? I didn't care. I cannot decide if it was weak character development or just unlikeable characters but this one just fell short of my expectations. There's also a book within a book here which honestly just felt like space filler most of the time, often recapping what we've already learned about the various creature types -- occasionally, if we were lucky it did serve to fill out their backstory a little -- still totally unnecessary. Perhaps if some characters were either removed or at least developed more. If the story was edited down a bit. I don't really know what could have fixed it but it's definitely broken. It had potential and I did consider three stars as there are parts of that I did like but there were just simply too many slow paced / feels like a chore to read parts. Two stars it is. Sadly. With a little tweaking, this could really have been an awesome book.
* Disclaimer: I received this book at no cost in order to review it. I offered no guarantee of a positive review, though I only request books I think I'll like because why read a book you think you’ll hate?
