Fantastic world building, Inventive story structure and Complex Characters

Rating 5/5

If ever an author were to combine the mind-bending dream-verse of Christopher Nolan’s Inception with the grey morality offered in the universe of Andrzej Sapkowski’s The Witcher I feel it would be Nicolas Lietzau. Lietzau’s canon fantasy Dreams of The Dying is pure satisfaction to a reader such as myself with just enough political intrigue and psychological horror to leave me wanting more.

After his work on indie game, Enderal: Forgotten Stories, it’s clear Lietzau had more to share with fans and newcomers, using it to pave the way for Dreams of The Dying.

And it really shows.

Lietzau’s world is incredibly detailed, offering a vast, vibrant land where the corrupt rule and the weak hunger for their pound of flesh. If you like exploring worlds that make you philosophically debate societal rule as it did for Lietzau’s characters, read Dreams of The Dying.

The Kilay Archipelagos are ruled by merchants willing to blackmail, cheat and kill their way to power and its does not matter who gets hurt along the way, until figurately speaking, the straw breaks the camel’s back.  Then things do matter. Enter Jesper Dal'Varek, who must not only deal with his own demons but also prevent a revolt while simultaneously seeking a cure for a merchant king trapped in a dream-induced coma.

An ideal candidate to play guide in this crazy world.

However, as we and Jesper himself discover, the dangers don’t just lie in the real world. Even dreams aren’t safe. In Dreams of The Dying, nightmare inducing parasites and dream walkers are not all you need to worry about. There is also your own sanity.

In Lietzau’s writing readers can find numberless chapters and chapter titles in reverse. There’s even a section structured entirely out of a square root spiral.  Little things like this I felt worked perfectly, contributing to characters’ psychological states. It fleshed them out and made them, both main and side characters, as complex as the world in which they are living in.

Overall, I would highly recommend reading Lietzau’s Dreams of The Dying. It’s the perfect grimdark, psychological horror/canon fantasy with incredible world building, story-telling and characters.