L's Reviews > A Multitude of Dreams

A perfectly fine young adult fantasy

In an Author's Note, Mara Rutherford explains A Multitude of Dreams as follows:

A Multitude of Dreams is my fifth published novel, but it’s a first for me in many ways. I was interested in playing with the idea of an unconventional retelling, but more importantly, I wanted to include Jewish representation—an integral part of my identity that I’ve always wanted to tie in to my fantasy writing.

I’m a fan of many of Poe’s works, but “The Masque of the Red Death” has long been my favorite. I love the imagery of the colored rooms, the idea of nobles dancing at a masquerade ball while the world around them rots, and the final twist that reminds us that no one escapes death, not even princes.

All of these things led me to write about a princess and a grave digger, neither of whom is who they appear to be, and the bizarre circumstances that bring them together. Of course, I started drafting this book years before we’d all be living through a plague of sorts, before I’d come to understand the concept of social distancing or lockdowns. The Petrarch quote at the beginning of this book speaks to how I conceived of plagues before I experienced one for myself; they really did seem like some kind of fable from the past to me, back then. Pretty naive, in retrospect.

But hey, at least our plague didn’t include vampires.

So, there we have it -- a Poe retelling with a secretly Jewish princess shut up inside a castle while a deadly plague ravages the country around, and there are monsters, because, apparently, the gothic genre demands them (even though, aside from the plague itself, there are no monsters in Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death").

The monsters are vampires. (Vampires, Ms Rutherford? Why?) They are fairly conventional vampires, with some of the weird hang-ups that Bram Stoker bestowed on them (e.g. they can't enter a house without an invitation) but differing in others (while Rutherford's vampires prefer darkness, sunlight appears not to have lethal effects). In fact, the second half of A Multitude of Dreams is a fairly conventional mortals vs vampires adventure. It's competently done, and I enjoyed it.

I thank NetGalley and Inkyard Press for an advance reader copy of A Multitude of Dreams. This review expresses my honest opinions.

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