Are your Dreams Fierce?

Fearsome Dreamer - Laure Eve 
Available Now and the final book in this Duology is available in August 2014! 

Welcome to the two very different countries where this tale resides - each has a completely different structure, belief system and most importantly technological understanding.

Pictured - Laure Eve being awesome

The dominant country known as 'World' is a conglomerate comprised of many separate countries we know today like America, China and parts of Europe to name a few. In World technology reigns supreme and all World citizens are implanted with a chip at birth allowing them to effortlessly jack into 'LIFE' the virtual reality accessible 24 hours a day. This is where everyone lives, they work, meet for coffee, travel, play games and hang out in Life. This online existence rules out any need to ever leave your home/city/country… public transportation no longer exists, there are no more outbreaks of disease or plane crashes and it's controlled easily through it's insularity. However the bulk of the story is set in the quaint and almost defiantly backwards realm of Angle Tar, Rue's home and where White has recently fled.

While World feels a little like the cautionary whale on the flip side there is Angle Tar, a small island compared to the vastness of World that seems a bastardised mix of old world London and Paris with a charming vocabulary to match. Here technology has been dismissed except for the most rudimentary creature comforts and in the face of such conformity feels wild and free, even a little dangerous. The 'when' of which this novel is set is hard to say, both of these new countries have an erie timelessness and they are both the future and the past in one alarming present. 

So Worlder's never leave their houses and Angle Tarians never leave their Island and at the heart of this story we have White and Rue and the gift of dreaming they share, one that very few others know anything about and a mysterious Castle that exists somewhere beyond these two realms but could hold the devastating end for them both.  My favourite of the immaculate details in this novel would have to be the nuances of language used, Laure creates such a strong image of characters and country. A great example of this is White's dialogue which, as a foreigner is noticeably stiff and formal where Rue as a commoner, is raw and honest, full of opinions and lust - Reading her as a YA character is a bit of a revelation really, a moment of "Ah this is what I've been missing". It's these wonderfully authentic details that set her writing apart and why I am so keen for Book 2 (the final of the series) even though I have a plethora of new books it ill jump to the top of my mountainous to-read pile!