Review: Ryan La Sala – Reverie

Reverie comes out in early January, and I can only recommend that you keep an eye out for it! It’s a very engaging, imaginative story, with a fantastic premisse.

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.

“Just gay enough to work” is what the siblings in this book say to each other, and it can also be said for this book.

Kane has lost his recent memories, but since he was in an accident, the police want to know what happened. He soon finds out he’s part of a group of friends that dismantles reveries, which are fantasies made real.

This book was engaging from the start. It’s a very imaginative novel, which reminded me of children’s fantasies like The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland, while at the same time being unlike anything I’ve ever read before. The book raises many questions in the first few chapters, but starts to answer them soon as well, so it never gets too confusing, and keeps raising new questions as well, so you’re always invested in what happens next.

Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like the characters were as developed as the world building, which always makes it hard for me to get truly immersed in the story. This would have surely been a 5 star read if I’d just felt like I’d gotten to know Kane and his friends and family a little better.

It’s still a really great read though! It’s funny, the world building is great, and it just has a fantastic premisse. I mean, a drag queen sorceress?!

Are you planning to read this book?

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