Lair of Dreams

Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray, 613 pages

A couple years ago, I described the first book in this series (The Diviners) as something akin to taking Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Scooby Gang and plopping them in the middle of New York City in the 1920s. After reading this second book, I'm sticking by that description but adding the phrase "more diverse" to the mix. Set in 1927, Lair of Dreams finds our Diviners in the middle of a mysterious sleeping sickness epidemic that has New York City baffled and ready to blame anyone, especially the immigrants whose neighborhoods seemed to be the source of the deadly disease. Enter Henry, a gay, piano-playing "dream walker" who enters into the dream world to find his long-lost love, Louis. While searching for Louis, he finds another dream walker, Ling Chan, a half-Chinese science geek who has the ability to speak to the dead through dreams. Together, Henry and Ling have to figure out how to stop the dreams that are killing New Yorkers left and right.

The first book in this series focused on different Diviners, namely flapper and object-reader Evie O'Neill, who certainly appears in this book, often soused on bootleg gin. Evie's sparkling ways were a highlight of the first book, and while her parts are certainly fun here (and she does know Henry, though she doesn't spend time with him), they're almost a distraction from the actual story of Henry and Ling. It almost feels like Bray wanted to write a totally different story without Evie and the other Diviners from the first book, but felt like she couldn't write one in the same world without connecting everyone in some way. Perhaps all this will come together later on in the series. I'll continue reading it because the setting and 1920s slang are so positutely cool, though this one pales in comparison to The Diviners.