I was daunted by the 19 odd hours of listening time I’d need to dedicate to this book. I expected it’d take me a few days at least. Yet here I am the following day having done nothing but listen and feeling a bit sleep deprived 🥱🎧

This is a book like nothing I’ve read before, told from the pov of our dead protagonist Lan, who is stuck mainly as a crow in the in between, because she makes a promise to try to be there for her grandson.

Lan has taught her open minded family to dream lucidly, dream with intent and they’ll meet her there. She spends years learning to navigate the in between and learning to connect her threads. Until they all desperately need her. She cannot make changes but she can influence their direction. Lucid dreaming fascinates me, do you ever dream so vividly that you’re actually in a place and you know you were there? so while the book is in the sci fi fantasy genre, I believed it. I believe that magic.

The story for the living descendants of Lan was a bit of everything, I was unsure if I’d get my head around the politics, the coding, the gaming etc, but Manda Scott’s writing simplified it in a way that I had a full grasp of the goings on without feeling lectured. There were a lot of interesting crossovers in the timeline, I wonder did you see these in your dreams, Manda?

There are a million dystopian fantasy’s out there that are wholly believable, but this is different, it takes us from dystopia to utopia and it is so full of hope, for a dreamer like me who truly believes we can leave a better world for future generations if we can come together and overcome the bad (with a little dreamed guidance) it was truly inspiring.

Thought provoking, uplifting and truly something special. Dream deeply, rise up strong, change is coming 💭

The narration was performed by Clare Corbett, who handled the nuances of the story with ease, a brilliant performance.

Special thanks to Bolinda Audio for the opportunity to listen to this audiobook via NetGalley, all views are my own.

This was advertised as a big, sweeping book that made grand, profound statements about the current state of the world. As far as I can tell, it's not that, but I also don't plan on sticking with it any longer in order to find out for sure.

First of all, if I wanted to know this much about World of Warcraft I would actually play the game. and anyone who has played it will probably find all the explanation of the game's minutiae maddening. Second, I get that Lan wants to keep tabs on her family from the afterlife but does that have to include spying on her grandson having sex with his girlfriend?? That was a really odd and unnecessary choice.

And finally, we get to the book's purported inciting incident, where Lan's granddaughter posts an allegedly earth-shaking, society-upending tweet... and the tweet is stating an opinion regarding consent and entertainment content that really seems completely normal and non-controversial, and in the real world would probably make the rounds before being more or less forgotten. as everyone moved on with their lives. A DNF as I just couldn't buy into what this book was selling as it's "deep and meaningful" message.