Book Review — A Dream So Dark by L.L. McKinney

A Dream So Dark is the action-packed second book in the Nightmare-verse series, the sequel to A Blade So Black, by L.L. McKinney.

Why isn’t everyone talking about this series? How is the bookstagram community sleeping on this? I want to be seeing these covers all over gorgeous spreads and bookstacks, and yet when I searched Instagram I saw less than 100 recent posts. And it only has 144 ratings on Goodreads? Am I missing something? Is this from lack of funding in the marketing campaign? Where is the grassroots rallying behind this #OwnVoices author of most excellent fun magical prose? GET ON THIS, PEOPLE.

Let me speak to you of the Nightmare-verse.
Reimagining of Alice in Wonderland? Check.
Dope heroine? Check.
Hot semi-immortal love interest? Check.
Horrifying shadow monsters? Check.
Healthy, sincere familial love? Check.
World where bushes are fluffy and taste like cotton candy? Check.
Ride-able flying dragons? Check. Check. Check.

The tag-line for this series is “What if Buffy fell down the rabbit hole instead of Alice?” which is a pretty accurate way to sum up the premise. Except, it should also be said that instead of Buffy we have a Black, bisexual teenage girl who can travel between realms to fight larger-than-life demons, save humanity, and fall in love, while keeping it all a secret from her strict mom. Sign me freakin’ up.

Alice talks like a real teenager. She reads as totally authentic to me. And often hilarious. She swears. She gets fed up with the weird supernatural events in her life. She often feels awkward, or clumsy, or nauseous. Her best friend Courtney is less believable, but remains a loyal sidekick who pushes Alice’s development more than seeking her own.



Alice’s relationship with her mom is fleshed out further in this book, and provides a fair amount of tension as well as a lot of comedy. “Some parents worry about losing they child in a mall or something, I lost mine through a...the hell you call it?...Got me feeling like I’m in the damn Twilight Zone.” As a rule, family is an important part of Alice’s life. Both her mom and grandmother get significant facetime in this book, rather than being distant characters that Alice remembers and battles for with honor. I love this. It keeps Alice deeply rooted in the human world, and helps to raise the stakes of everything she’s fighting for.

The fight scenes are riveting. L.L. McKinney writes them with a breakneck pace that thoroughly stresses me out, but in the best way. And there are a lot of moments to be stressed about in this book. The last quarter of the story, I was sitting up in bed, flipping pages like crazy, worried much less about critique or style or literary quality than I was with finding out what was going to happen to these characters that I was (am) so invested in. The book ends with a lot of unanswered questions, which might be irritating for some, but leaves me salivating for the confirmed book three: A Crown So Cursed.

At a base level, I just think these books are really clever. Twists from the original Alice in Wonderland crop up more in the first book, but are carried through in A Dream So Dark in imaginative choices that demonstrate L.L. McKinney is thinking beyond the box of the original. The characters are fun. The relationships are fun. The setting is fun. The villains are fun. Both books were a joy to read, and I’m so very glad there will be a third.

Side note: I’m having a great time comparing the UK covers of my recent library reads with the ones I’m used to seeing from my TBR list compiled in the States. But I have to admit that for the Nightmare-verse I really like the US covers better, with the beautiful, badass girl holding a sword. Look at her!