[REVIEW] Dream Walker Book 1 Urban Fantasy

I have so many complicated feelings about this book. 3.75 - 4 stars?? I'm honestly torn.

You know how Hollywood takes longer books and cuts out a LOT of stuff when they convert it to a movie? This book almost feels like the screenplay version of its longer OG version (that doesn't actually exist)... I really think this book needed to be like 3x longer.

Vibes:

- Alice in Wonderland

- Sucker Punch

- Ann Rice (any of her paranormals)

- Noir / Mafia movies

Here's what I loved and want to give 5 stars:

1. Alice and Wonderland, but make it new adult and dark (yeah, even darker than the Tim Burton movies) and give it urban fantasy roots

2. This world! It is SO FREAKING COOL. Like, of course the Caterpillar is a demon gang lord, and Rabbit is a hermit weapons crafter that can manipulate time. It's Alice meets Sucker Punch meets Ann Rice (yep, there are vampires... werewolves too). It's so clever and so cool. 

3. Action. Action. And More Action. This book literally throws you on the fire and you just jump from skillet to skillet to bonfire. 

4. The "omniscient" narration style, where we swap across characters actually works really well here. You can see all the pieces of this massive chessboard coming together, even when you don't really know the characters well. (I REALLY hope that is how we're meant to see it, b/c the chess reference to the OG Alice in Wonderland just makes me... gleeful.)

Here's my wishlist:

1. Character development. We know so little of Alison, our FMC, and, like, I want to empathize with her more as the characters in the Wasteland just throw her into more and more sh!t. But I don't know her. And we don't get enough internalization of her character to really feel like we know her. It's mostly dialogue reactions, which can often feel abrupt.

2. World Building. I want more descriptors of the world, through exposition or Alison's internal reactions to the world around her. There's some, don't get me wrong. But this world is COOL and I WANT MORE.

3. Chapter two is basically an info dump. I, personally, prefer to learn this stuff slowly throughout the narrative. I get why the author chose this (see above note on all. the. action), so I think this just links to my overall wish that this was longer.

Despite the wishlist above, don't be thinking I didn't like this book. I loved it. I will be reading book 2 when it releases (this year)! As an ARC reader!!!! (so I don't have to wait long!)

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