dani ༊'s Reviews > A Multitude of Dreams

thank you netgalley for the arc !

˚₊· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 3/5 stars ✩࿐

read if you like:
♡ dual pov
♡ lies upon lies upon lies
♡ jewish rep
♡ edgar allen poe

⁀➷ dear reader,
you’re cordially invited to a bloody and gothic masquerade, seething with intrigue, skin-crawling discoveries and leering, shadowy twists and turns.
location: a multitude of dreams.
length: 384 pages

⁀➷ princess imogen of goslind kingdom has been dancing in one endless masquerade ball since coming to eldridge hall. for should the dance end and her mask fall, her doom will be writ in stone. the real princess imogen died four years ago of mori roja, the same plague which ravaged and pillaged the kingdom. only a privileged few in her midst know that beneath the mask is jewish commoner seraphina blum. but within the shadowy walls of the palace she is by no means the only dancer in this game of pretend. with a mad king who has locked them all up in the palace and makes impossible demands of them, everyone has been bullied into two-stepping around this ballroom of charade. now that the food supplies are petering out, it’s looking like the masquerading is about to forcefully come to a long-overdue end. meanwhile, elsewhere in goslind, plague survivor nicodemus mott resides in crane manor thanks to the benevolence of lord crane, who granted tenancy to nico and other immunes. with the plague ostensibly having burned itself out, nico’s been tasked by the same man who saved him to get the lay of the land, as well as scour for survivors. when he ends up at eldridge hall, nico and seraphina’s paths and their manifold lies weave together.

⁀➷ as a retelling of edgar allan poe’s the masque of the red death, a multitude of dreams already has a weighty mantle to bear. it’s no easy feat to honour such eerily lush material and yet, with the conceit of a masquerade, unsettling imagery dripping with blood and gothic notes ringing in the mysterious passages of eldridge hall - rutherford has exceptionally paid her due to the original over and over. thumbing through each page you’ll feel the horrors within breathing down your neck and continuing down the shadowy path of the story to see where it leads to will seem almost involuntary.

⁀➷ unfortunately, here comes the universally dreaded caveat of but… in determining to embrace an element of historical fiction by virtue of having jews represented and in turn scapegoated by the people of goslind for the plague outbreak, the story takes on an even heavier load (before anyone attacks me for this - i’m jewish myself…). by itself this was not an unwise authorial choice and very well could have even enriched what is otherwise a story more concerned with thrill than perhaps some sort of moral discourse. it’s only when you juxtapose it with the more gauche, over the top supernatural ingredients going into the mixing bowl that you’re then left with everything feeling a bit cheapened all around. the load carried on this plot’s shoulders is far too cumbersome and in effect, the masterful execution of the gothic genre is rendered a little ungainly.

⁀➷ i found nico as a character to be a little one-note although sweet in his bashfulness. his chivalric tendencies were endearing if not a bit trite at times. seraphina i wanted desperately to like what with her eschewing her opulent room in favour of a drafty abandoned tower - i mean, the girl has principles!! but it was not to be for us. the humbleness swiftly turned into a bit of a martyred routine and her insistence on being not like other girls was pretty on the nose. that said, in the company of one another i did find them both to be far more enjoyable as the youthfulness of their romance warmed the cockles of my heart.

⁀➷ conclusion :
as a gothic fairytale, a multitude of dreams will seize your attention and hold it captive till the end with its shadowy vaults of secrecy. disregarding my sentiments towards the jewish subplot, the twisting, foreboding sentences and pages cobwebbed with lies will leave you breathless until the final act.