The Dreamers
The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around–and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old, he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone braver than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the form of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? And who is the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams? In this sweeping and breathtaking novel by National Book Award finalist Laini Taylor, author of the New York Times bestselling Daughter of Smoke & Bone trilogy, the shadow of the past is as real as the ghosts who haunt the citadel of murdered gods. Fall into a mythical world of dread and wonder, moths and nightmares, love and carnage. The answers await in Weep. ([source][1])
What you might want to know about The Dreamers
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
In a small Southern California college town, a freshman falls asleep at a dorm party and never wakes up. The illness spreads. Across linked chapters, students, parents, and a young couple new to town watch the city quarantine.
The most commonly searched is The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker (2019), about a sleeping sickness that spreads through a California college town. The metadata above lists Laini Taylor in error.
Yes. Karen Thompson Walker's The Dreamers (2019) and Ling Ma's Severance (2018) are often paired as quiet literary novels about pandemic-style outbreaks. Both predate COVID-19 and gained renewed attention during the pandemic.
The Dreamers is 536 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Dreamers takes most readers 8 to 12 hours to finish.
The Dreamers is a standalone novel by Laini Taylor, not part of a series.
The Dreamers is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.