DreamFall – Series Review

Dreamfall and Neverwake by Amy Plum

Summary for Dreamfall from Goodreads:

Cata Cordova suffers from such debilitating insomnia that she agreed to take part in an experimental new procedure. She thought things couldn’t get any worse…but she was terribly wrong.

Soon after the experiment begins, there’s a malfunction with the lab equipment, and Cata and six other teen patients are plunged into a shared dreamworld with no memory of how they got there. Even worse, they come to the chilling realization that they are trapped in a place where their worst nightmares have come to life. Hunted by creatures from their darkest imaginations and tormented by secrets they’d rather keep buried, Cata and the others will be forced to band together to face their biggest fears. And if they can’t find a way to defeat their dreams, they will never wake up.

First off I want to give another shout out to those awesome covers!  I just love how they mesh together.  More publishers should do this.  Although I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a creepy carousel dream in book two.  

These two books mesh together just as well as their covers.   There was a slight change in the narrators in the second book, which bothered me a little bit, but it ended up being ok. 

Jamie and Cata are the two narrators that are consistent in both books.  In book one we also get part of the story from Fergus, but in the second book Ant, one of the other dreamers, becomes a narrator.  Ant was an interesting character and one I wanted to know more about, but I also missed Fergus’s perspective.

The dreams that the characters go through are all very intense and scary at times.  But the scarier part might have been what was going on in the real world.  Jamie does a great job trying to figure out what is going on and trying to help the dreamers. It is a shame that the doctors don’t listen to him sooner.  Jamie is the pre-med student who is watching the experiment for a paper.  Without Jamie taking control of the situation in the real world the story would have ended up much different.  

Cata is a strong character throughout both books.  She quickly becomes the one that the others come to rely on as she figures out their dreams and how to survive them.  She does have some issues though, but she is able to overcome them.  

Fergus and Ant were both solid characters.  Fergus was the protector of the group, always sticking up for the weaker and the first to put himself in danger.  I liked how he was able to manage his emotions which help him to control his narcolepsy.  Ant’s dreams were probably some of the more terrifying ones.  But she was also the one who figured out how to manipulate the dream world and the void.  

The whole idea of the characters sharing a dream world when the sleep experiment goes wrong was a bit far fetched, but truly fascinating at the same time.  The dreams were vivid and scary and well written.  The backgrounds on all of the kids were well thought out as well.  The pacing of both books was good and they both were hard to put down.  The ending was well done, although Sinclair’s storyline doesn’t end quite like I wanted it too.  He is one of the dreamers, and the character I liked the least in the story.

A fascinating duology  about sleep and dreams and how they can haunt you.   One I recommend you pick up especially if you like your science fiction with some horror.