The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta
The Lost Dreamer
Teen, Young Adult, Magical Realism, Indian Spirits
Farrat, Strauss, Giroux (BYR)
March 1, 2022
Kindle, Audiobook, Hardback
384
Indir is a Dreamer, descended from a long line of seers; able to see beyond reality, she carries the rare gift of Dreaming truth. But when the beloved king dies, his son has no respect for this time-honored tradition. King Alcan wants an opportunity to bring the Dreamers to a permanent end―an opportunity Indir will give him if he discovers the two secrets she is struggling to keep. As violent change shakes Indir’s world to its core, she is forced to make an impossible choice: fight for her home or fight to survive. Saya is a seer, but not a Dreamer―she has never been formally trained. Her mother exploits her daughter’s gift, passing it off as her own as they travel from village to village, never staying in one place too long. Almost as if they’re running from something. Almost as if they’re being hunted. When Saya loses the necklace she’s worn since birth, she discovers that seeing isn’t her only gift―and begins to suspect that everything she knows about her life has been a carefully-constructed lie. As she comes to distrust the only family she’s ever known, Saya will do what she’s never done before, go where she’s never been, and risk it all in the search of answers. With a detailed, supernaturally-charged setting and topical themes of patriarchal power and female strength, Lizz Huerta's The Lost Dreamer brings an ancient world to life, mirroring the challenges of our modern one.
“I was in awe at the shape my story was taking.”
The Lost Dreamer by Lizz Huerta is an amazing experience that will ignite your imagination. Inspired and written on Kumeyaay land, which is now San Diego County and Baja Mexico, this immersion in ancient Mesoamerican culture transports the reader to a time where the Dream (the spiritual realm) is honored and protected by a matron line of Dreamers. A world where Indir and Saya’s individual “stories” become intertwined with the greater “story” of their civilization. Where their different gifts link the spiritual realm with the people and creatures of the Waking World. And where their lives and the connection they discover to each other becomes the key to finding the prophesized Lost Dreamer; the one who will save the world from the chaos that is initiated at the sign of the comet.
Lizz Huerta masterfully and artfully weaves a truly compelling tale with The Lost Dreamer.
“I don’t tell stories; I follow them. Stories have lives of their own.”
I have to gush over her ability to put her own unique mark, through her writing style, on a fascinating ancient world, centered on its religious and political capital, Alcanzeh. She has created a cast of intriguing characters which personalize a story saturated in fantasy and magic. Indir and Saya are magnetic individuals in their own way, with their perspective of the world and people around them as well as their point of view of the Dream intimately endearing them to me. Adding these components to a spell-binding allegory meant that I was not only entertained but prompted to think deeper about my own purpose in the bigger picture of life.
However, the most impressive thing about The Lost Dreamer was the ending. It completely took me by surprise, in a really good way. I never saw it coming! But this is far from the end of the story. While there is no information to date on subsequent publications, it clearly will be continued, as it ends with Saya declaring…”I’m following the story, to Alcanzeh,’ I said. ‘Come with me.”
Tanya’s love for books has been a lifelong passion that she likes sharing with others. Reading is also the thing that relaxes her after a day of juggling the many responsibilities that come with being being wife to an amazing man, mother to four great kids spread around the world, business manager, and farm hand on their place in southwest Missouri; home to Akaushi cattle and a menagerie of pygmy goats, horses, chickens, dogs and cats.
