bri's Reviews > A Multitude of Dreams

Thank you to the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

A Multitude of Dreams by Mara Rutherford reimagines The Masque of the Red Death in this Jewish YA gothic fantasy following Seraphina, a young Jewish girl who has been forced to abandon her community and disguise herself as a princess in a locked castle amidst the plague.

I LOVE The Masque of the Red Death and have been SO excited to see a modern (and Jewish!) take on it. I think Poe’s tale has so much potential to be retold with new perspectives, especially right now, as we ourselves have a very close and personal relationship to pandemics.

And this story sets up a lot in terms of what it has to say, primarily: 1. commentary on classism as a king has locked himself, his family, and wealthy nobles in a castle as the rest of the populous is left vulnerable to a fatal plague and 2. the history of Jewish people being blamed for plagues leading to violent pogroms.

But the thing I love about gothic stories is the way they employ allegory and nuance, and I think the themes of A Multitude of Dreams were addressed in too straight-forward of a manner. Especially considering The Masque of the Red Death itself is SO mysterious and abstract, I was hoping for some real thematic depth. But these themes just weren’t properly saturated into the characters and the plot lines, or tucked in-between the words. The bits of symbolism and metaphor that were utilized felt more sprinkled around as an afterthought for the sake of vibes rather than used as the core force of the narrative.

It was almost trying to execute a gothic tale but structured in the style of a fantasy adventure, and it was very much at conflict with itself. Because what happens when themes are confronted directly is that they end up being kind of one-and-done, so as to not feel too repetitive for readers. And the story ends up needing more content that isn’t related to the themes to keep it moving. But because this content isn’t related to the rest of the story’s themes, it ends up feeling tangential and frankly, distracting. And that’s what happened with this book. Particularly with the vampires.

I actually really liked the idea of vampires in this world. And I think these vampires COULD have added something allegorically to these conversations (I even expected them to! I thought they were going to be an allegory for greed or for the brutality of pandemics), but they just didn’t say anything (I mean you could kind of argue that they were some sort of punishment on the upper class for their sins but that’s not even consistently accurate). And that’s just the thing here. There were so many times I thought a certain plot line or story element would be Saying Something, just for it to turn out to be nothing.

This book was trying to do a lot. And I felt like it could have accomplished it with the right pushes. I think all of the elements were set up in the right places, and I really liked the writing and the characters. But it felt like it just struggled to be precise and lost its way. In attempting to solve one problem, it would mess up another. Reading this book almost felt like watching one of those clown sketches where someone sets up something and then turns around and sets up another thing just to turn back to the first thing having fallen and they just keep going back and forth with each object falling right when they fix the other. It struggled to juggle all its elements and frankly just wasn’t smart enough or precise enough to really accomplish what it set out to.

I wouldn’t say this is a bad book by any means. In fact, I do think YA audiences who aren’t too caught up in worrying about allegory could really enjoy it. It does indeed talk about Jewish people being blamed for plagues (though in a slightly messy way) and does have some cool atmospheric choices (I loved the clock!!) and a lovely romance. (Though considering the intimacy of the romance, I think this book was intended for an older YA crowd, who probably would prefer a little more finesse in its craft.) And I didn’t have a bad time reading it by any means! Again, I liked the characters and the writing quite a bit! But sadly A Multitude of Dreams did not reach the height of my hopes for it.

As a side note: I've seen some non-Jewish reviewers say that the problem with this book is its Jewishness and I'd like to respectfully ask that if you are not of a community, you don't get to decide which stories that community does and does not belong in. I will say: the Jewishness of this book was is highs and its lows.
Highs:
-Seraphina's love for her community and culture
-The very real discussion of the fact that Jewish people and communities were forced to live in ghettos and then were mass murdered when their forced isolation kept them safe from disease.
Lows:
-the use of "anti-Semitism" instead of "antisemitism" which I hope was fixed in the final copy (Google it please)
-“What were you expecting? A hooked nose? A foul odor? Cloven hooves?” the careless lumping in of an actual facial feature commonly occurring in Jewish and non-white people with horrific antisemitic myths
-the lack of closure we got with the world's antisemitism considering the fact that Seraphina was a Jew disguised as a gentile princess–she never really reckoned with this at the end.
But seriously, if you're not Jewish, you have no right to speak on this portrayal or the Jewish presence in this story in general.

CW: plague, antisemitism, forced confinement, loss of loved ones (past), dead bodies, violence, gun violence, blood & gore, beheading, animal death, death, poisoning, alcohol consumption, self-harm, death in childbirth (past), home invasion (past), emesis