Liandra and the Dream Reader - Belart Wright

   2015; 86 pages.  Full Title: Liandra and the Dream Reader, An Average Joe Extraordinary Tale, Part 0.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Dark Fantasy; Young Adult Urban Fantasy Adventure (according to the Amazon blurb); Novella).  Overall Rating : 7*/10.

    Liandra Keyrouz suffers from recurring nightmares.  She’s been having them for six years now, ever since she was ten years old.  They leave her drained, waking her up with dread feelings of panic and terror.  Needless to say, her total exhaustion is having a negative impact on her grades in high school. 

    Curiously, she never can remember the details of the nightmares, just the emotional trauma afterward.  Liandra and her parents are at their wits’ end as to what can be done about this.

    Liandra’s tried amphetamines.  They keep her awake all night, which means no nightmares.  But she has to come down sometime, and then there’s hell to pay.

    Her parents have also sent her to a number of psychologists.  They cost a lot of money, but their help to Liandra has been minimal or nonexistent.  As a last resort, they now want to send Liandra to some sort of New Age quack, who wears funny clothing and cheap trinkets on his fingers, wrists, and neck.

    No doubt he’s just another shyster who wants to take some of her parents’ money.

What’s To Like...

    Liandra and the Dream Reader is a prequel to Average Joe and the Extraordinaires, which I read some years back and is reviewed here.   Liandra is an enigmatic supporting character there, with some amazing supernatural powers.  A number of readers, including me, found her to be more fascinating than Joe, which is not a slam against him; he is, by definition “Average”.  Alas, her backstory isn’t given in AJE, and this book addresses that.

    I liked the two settings – London, England and Stockholm, Sweden.  The latter was mostly in Gamla stan, which I’d never heard of, but is the “old town” section of Stockholm.  Belart Wright is born and raised in Detroit, so it was a bold step to use faraway settings for L&tDR, and it works quite well.

    The target audience is teenage readers who are into Urban Fantasy.  There is a mystical ambiance to the book, with things like “Craftes” and “Life Force”, and that resonated with me.  I liked the reference to Baalbek, since I’m a history buff.  Doing amphetamines, aka “Dexies”, was realistically portrayed, which added to the dark tone of the book.  And I had to google the word “Habibti", a term of endearment used by Mr. Keyrouz.

    The dialogue is punctuated weirdly, the format being the name of the speaker, a colon, and then the quote.  The excerpts below give some examples of this.  Belart Wright also used this in AJE, so I was used to it.  For some reason, the format wasn’t used when the doctor and the beast were speaking.  I have no clue why.

Kindle Details...

    Liandra and the Dream Reader currently sells for $0.99 at Amazon.  Belart Wright has nine other e-books available at Amazon, most of which are full-length novels.  They all sell for $0.99, which is a pretty good deal IMO.  Belart Wright often credits the illustrators of his book covers as co-authors at Amazon, which I think is way kewl.

Excerpts...

    Mrs. Keyrouz: “We’ve gotten some good results from your sleep therapist, Dr. Thomas.  He says that you’re actually making progress.  He’s given us a chart here that shows the various chemical fluctuations going on in your body.  He told us that if we regulate the hormones in your body to normal levels that it’s possible for your mind to stop producing these horrible night terrors when you sleep.”

    Liandra: “He’s lying.”  (loc. 976)

    “Have you forgotten about everything else?  Your schoolwork, your college preparation, your future?  Stopping now could derail all your plans.”

    Liandra: “I won’t be able to focus on any of that until I rid myself of these dreams.  I’ll always struggle more than everyone else and will never reach my full potential.  I’ll be too damn tired to do anything.”

    Mrs. Keyrouz: “No cursing in this house.”  (loc. 546)

 “What a foul thing to say, even from a monster.”  (loc. 369)

    I think this book works quite well as an answer for those who read Average Joe and the Extraordinaires and wanted to know more about Liandra’s background.  If you haven’t read AJE, here’s hoping this book piques your interest to read more about her adventures alongside Average Joe.

    Keep in mind this is a novella: only 86 pages long and covered via 14 chapters.  There are only a few characters to follow, there isn’t a lot of complexity or depth, and the action is mostly looking for the cause of Liandra’s nightmares, not taking steps against them.  It’s a quick read (you can finish it in a single sitting), but it’s not a standalone story, and its raison d’etre is to set up, and give background information about, the Average Joe series.  Nothing is resolved here, although I do get the feeling that Liandra will become Joe's main sidekick .

    7 Stars.  The book closes with an indication that, in addition to the Average Joe series (which at this point is a trilogy), there was a Liandra and the Dream Reader, Part Two in the offing, presumably featuring Liandra as the main protagonist.  I don’t see it offered at Amazon, and Belart Wright has lately been concentrating on a pair of LitRPG series, so I’m guessing that means the Liandra series has been either tabled or scrapped.  Here's hoping it gets started again.