Review: Reverie by Ryan La Sala

Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Fantasy, LGBTQ

Pages: 384 pages

Expected publication: December 3rd 2019 by Sourcebooks Fire

Synopsis:

Inception meets The Magicians, except with better wigs and a maniacal drag queen sorceress attempting to unravel the reality of Connecticut (yes, the state) and replace it with something…well something better than Connecticut.

Ryan La Sala’s debut fantasy is an #OwnVoices story following Kane Montgomery, a gay teenager piecing his life back together after an attack robs him of his memories. As Kane searches for who he was, he uncovers a war for the creative rights to reality itself, each battle played out in an imagined world turned real: a reverie.

Reveries are worlds born from a person’s private fantasies, and once they manifest they can only be unraveled by bringing their conflicts to resolution. Reveries have rules and plots, magic and monsters, and one wrong step could twist the entire thing into a lethal, labyrinthine nightmare. Unraveling them is dangerous work, but it’s what Kane and The Others do.

Or did, until one of The Others purged Kane of his memories. But now Kane is back, and solving the mystery of his betrayal is the only way to unite his team and defeat reality’s latest threat: Poesy, a sorceress bent on harvesting the reveries for their pure, imaginative power.

But what use might a drag queen sorceress have with a menagerie of stolen reveries? And should Kane, a boy with no love for a team that betrayed him, fight to stop her, or defect to aid her?

Reverie is about the seduction of escaping inwards, about the worlds we hide within ourselves, and the danger of dreams that come true.

My Thoughts

This book came to me when I needed it most in my life!

Wow, where do I begin? To sum up this book? Upside Down meets Inception! La Sala created a whimsical world, and I loved it. I loved the characters, their depth, their quarrels, and banding together. I wasn’t prepared for romance but I have to say I adored that part of the story, too. And yes, the drag queen sorceress as a villain…pretty epic in every fashion.

If you’re looking for something weird [in the most fantastic way,] something different, something to draw you in, this is definitely it. I’m so sad for those of you who have to wait to read it!