Book Review: Dreamless by Josephine Angelini

Can true love be forgotten?

As the only Scion who can descend into the Underworld, Helen Hamilton has been given a nearly impossible task. By night she wanders through Hades, trying to stop the endless cycle of revenge that has cursed her family. By day she struggles to overcome the fatigue that is rapidly eroding her sanity. Without Lucas by her side, Helen is not sure she has the strength to go on.

Just as Helen is pushed to her breaking point, a mysterious new Scion comes to her rescue. Funny and brave, Orion shields her from the dangers of the Underworld. But time is running out—a ruthless foe plots against them, and the Furies’ cry for blood is growing louder.

As the ancient Greek world collides with the mortal one, Helen’s sheltered life on Nantucket descends into chaos. But the hardest task of all will be forgetting Lucas Delos.

Other than a few other young adult novels out right now, like The Goddess series by Aimee Carter and Sweet Venom by Tera Lynn Childs, there aren’t that many stories that use the basis of Greek or Roman mythology (as a specific source) for subject matter.  After reading Angelini’s debut novel, Starcrossed, last summer, I knew that her story was something deeper than a love story and that it was rich with literary and mythological references.   Not only does Angelini call upon the actual myths of the Greek and Roman culture, but also from the Odyssey, the Iliad, and the Aeneid.   I can only imagine how much research went into this series, and I learned a lot from Dreamless.

Dreamless picks up immediately after the end of Starcrossed, and the epic battle and the heartbreaking reveal by Daphne.  If you haven’t read Starcrossed, then you  might be a little lost because there is little in the way of summary explaining what has already happened.  Despite this, I think that Angelini’s writing and her plot development skills have increased greatly since the first installment of this trilogy.  The reader is given vivid and sometimes disturbing descriptions of the hideous and lonely underworld, where Helen spends every night attempting to break the curse of the Furies upon the Scions.  The parts in the underworld, as weird as it sounds, are definitely some of my favorites from Dreamless.

There are some major developments early in the novel, and the entire narrative is completely action based. We do get to spend time with old favorites like Claire, Matt, and the Delos clan—but the most noticeable absence through most of the book is Lucas, who was so central to the first.  I honestly don’t think it was a bad thing because of the introduction of a new male lead—Orion.  Personally, I found Orion to be delightful.  A wealth of new characters are introduced, including the God of the Underworld and his Queen, Hades and Persephone, Morpheus the God of Dreams, and Ares, God of War. 

Helen’s life gets extremely complicated (but I’m not going to go into that for the sake of the story), and I was hanging on every word.  Angelini has honed her craft exceptionally well in Dreamless, and I can only imagine how epic (like epic poems, get it?) the final installment will be. 

One thing: I certainly hope that Helen figures out why Ares needed all three of them (Helen, Orion, and Lucas) to perform the final portion of the novel near the beginning of the final installment.  It is fairly obvious to me as a reader—but who knows.

4.5 Bards