A Dream So Dark (2019)

The second book in the “Nightmare-Verse,” A Dream So Dark is an interesting follow-up to A Blade So Black. It builds on some of the great stuff from the first book while smoothing out some of the earlier wrinkles and expanding on the larger world of Wonderland and the Dreamwalkers. If it threw me for a loop to reach the end of A Blade So Black and realize it was the first installment in a trilogy, it was an even harder blow to finish this book and realize that the final book isn’t coming out until 2023! It’s gonna be a long wait. (Premise spoilers, which spoil the end of A Blade So Black.)

Dreamwalker Alice Kingston is drawn deeper into Wonderland’s rising conflicts, driven by the Black Knight who answers to a mysterious unnamed power in the land. Alice blames herself for the way things shook out in the last book, when she went up against the Black Knight and her close friend Chess paid a heavy price. Now, Chess is under the thrall of the the Black Knight’s ruler, and Alice is determined to make things right in any way she can.

This book manages to feel both tighter and more expansive than A Blade So Black, which is a neat trick. We get to see more regions of Wonderland and more of the beings there – the first book often features Wonderland more as a backdrop and a source of Nightmares than as a world where people live, and this book offers us a better look at the lives of everyday Wonderlandians. We meet a new Dreamwalker, along with a Wonderlandian guardian of a different Gate, and we learn a bit more about Wonderland’s lore, getting into more details about the war with the Black Queen and how that history plays into what’s happening in the present. But at the same time, we’re given a sharper focus, with the story feeling more closely-defined and culminating to a very specific conclusion. If A Blade So Black feels a bit like an exploration, A Dream So Dark is more of a journey.

Alice remains a terrific heroine. She carries the YA mantle of being more powerful/special than she knows, but the way she wrestles with that mostly avoids feeling trite or rote. Whie she’s confused, insecure, and guilt-ridden, she’s also a fighter who never gives up, prepared to leap into any situation to protect the people she cares about, no matter how dangerous. There’s some great material here for her, both during her adventure in Wonderland and back home in her relationship with her mom. It’s really cool to see her find the hero within herself, and I’m excited to see where the final book is going to take her.

Although I still love Alice’s perspective in the narration, I like that this book opens up the POV a little, giving us a number of chapters from Hatta’s perspective or the Black Knight’s. Narratively-speaking, the characters get split up a little more, so this is the best way to keep us up to speed on what’s happening in different areas of the story, but it also gives us more insight into these characters. Given Alice’s obvious fascination with Hatta, it’s good to see him as more of his own person, and after being intrigued by the Black Knight in the first book, he’s given space to really come into his own here. L.L. McKinney does a nice job of distinguishing between the three characters’ differing sensibilities in how she writes the chapters from their individual perspectives.

Warnings

Violence, language, sensuality, disturbing imagery, and strong thematic elements.