Strange The Dreamer News by Laini Taylor
Cover Reveal & Prologue Sneak Peek!
I don't know about you guys but I am absolutely ecstatic about Laini Taylor's new novel 'Strange The Dreamer', so I was even more delighted when I was contacted to say that I could spread the news of the cover reveal and sneak peek of Strange The Dreamer.
If you didn't know Laini Taylor is the awesome author of the Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy which includes Daughter of Smoke and Bone, Days of Blood and Starlight & Dreams of Gods and Monsters. Now she has announced a new duology (I believe) called the Strange the Dreamer duology with the first book Strange the Dreamer being released in September 2016!
And just to get everyone excited about this book read the blurb below! It is tantalizing!!
Strange the Dreamer is the story of:
the aftermath of a war between gods and men
a mysterious city stripped of its name
a mythic hero with blood on his hands
a young librarian with a singular dream
a girl every bit as perilous as she is imperiled
alchemy and blood candy, nightmares and godspawn, moths and monsters, friendship and treachery, love and carnage.
Welcome to Weep.
Is everyone ready to see the cover!
Let's start with the UK Cover!
Isn't it just gorgeous!! I love that blue sparkly colour and the moth and the font. It just looks spectacular!
And let's see the US cover now!
I have to say that I really love this one too! The difference in the colours and again the font suits the layout of the book. It is absolutely stunning!
And so everyone can see them side by side!
I really can't pick a favourite to be honest, which is really rare for me. Usually I either prefer the UK or the US but never both. Tell me in the comments what you think of both the covers and which one you prefer.
Lastly we have the sneak peek of the prologue! Who is ready???
Prologue
On the second sabbat of Twelfthmoon, in the city
of Weep, a girl fell from the sky.
Her skin was blue, her blood was red.
She broke over an iron gate, crimping it on
impact, and there she hung, impossibly arched, graceful as a temple dancer
swooning on a lover’s arm. One slick finial anchored her in place. Its point,
protruding from her sternum, glittered like a brooch. She fluttered briefly as
her ghost shook loose, and then her hands relaxed, shedding fistfuls of freshly
picked torch ginger buds.
Later, they would say these had been hummingbird
hearts and not blossoms at all.
They would say she hadn’t shed blood
but wept
it. That she was lewd, tonguing her teeth at them, upside down and dying, that
she vomited a serpent that turned to smoke when it hit the ground. They would
say a flock of moths had come, frantic, and tried to lift her away.
That was true. Only that.
They hadn’t a prayer, though. The moths were no
bigger than the startled mouths of children, and even dozens together could
only pluck at the strands of her darkening hair until their wings sagged,
sodden with her blood. They were purled away with the blossoms as a grit-choked
gust came blasting down the street. The earth heaved underfoot. The sky spun on
its axis. A queer brilliance lanced through billowing smoke, and the people of
Weep had to squint against it. Blowing grit and hot light and the stink of saltpeter.
There had been an explosion. They might have died, all and easily, but only
this girl had, shaken from some pocket of the sky.
Her feet were bare, her mouth stained damson. Her
pockets were all full of plums. She was young and lovely and surprised and
dead.
She was also blue.
Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or
dragonfly wings, or a spring—not summer—sky.
Someone screamed. The scream drew others. The
others screamed, too, not because a girl was dead, but because the girl was
blue, and this meant something in the city of Weep. Even after the sky stopped
reeling, and the earth settled, and the last fume spluttered from the blast
site and dispersed, the screams went on, feeding themselves from voice to
voice, a virus of the air.
The blue girl’s ghost gathered itself and perched,
bereft, upon the spearpoint-tip of the projecting finial, just an inch above
her own still chest. Gasping in shock, she tilted back her invisible head and
gazed, mournfully, up.
The screams went on and on.
And across the city, atop a monolithic wedge of
seamless, mirror-smooth metal, a statue stirred, as though awakened by the
tumult, and slowly lifted its great horned head.
(©Laini Taylor, STRANGE THE DREAMER, out September 2016 by Hodder & Stoughton)
So what do you guys think? I know I am so super excited for this book and it is still so far away! Hurry up September!!
