Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Dream Magic: Awakenings by Dawn Harshaw

Title: Dream Magic: Awakenings
Author: Dawn Harshaw
Publication Date: May 4, 2012
Length: 160 pages

When I read the premise of Dream Magic: Awakenings, I jumped at the chance to read it. It's being compared to Harry Potter, because it's about kids learning magic, but these kids are learning magic in their dreams. Basically, they have a shared lucid dream, where they learn different types of magic, which they use to fight their nightmares.

You know how Star Wars is sort of fantasy in a sci-fi setting? Well, this is like sci-fi in a fantasy setting. What I mean by that is that rather than the focus on character development and story that you usually get in a fantasy novel, this book is more like sci-fi, which tends to focus more on ideas, and how things work. This book is very focused on how the different types of magic work.

I was actually looking forward to that, going into the book, because learning how magic works seemed like a pretty cool idea. The only problem is, magic is really confusing! I get the feeling that Dawn put a lot of work into her theories of magic, which is awesome, but to be honest they mostly went right over my head. The characters often said that they didn't understand the explanations, either, but that they got some kind of intuitive understanding of it somehow. Unfortunately, I was not in dream land, so I got no such intuition.

So, while the premise of this story is awesome, I would have appreciated more in the way of character development, and a bit less in the way of really confusing descriptions of magical concepts.

3 stars.

Full disclosure: Free ebook copy received from the author.

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