Note: This book has, at the time of publishing this review, not been translated into English (yet). I am unable to read the original Chinese release, therefore I'll be basing my review on the German edition which I read.
By the author of White Fox, this one looked very interesting to me. Bonus points for the cute cat on the cover. Spoilers ahead.
Kiki is a girl facing her own struggles. When a mysterious black cat shows up into her life, she is transported to the realm of dreams where she learns about this mysterious world. She meets up with the Dream Eldest, a wise old man capable of providing the world with dreams, and is given a task by him: to become a Dream Keeper. This entails fulfilling people's wishes in their dreams, with the guidance of Bobbi the cat, her dream guide. But Kiki soon finds that this is a difficult task, especially with nightmare forces showing up to ruin otherwise good dreams.
Okay, so first things first, turns out this book is not xenofiction despite it being marketed as a bit of a follow-up to White Fox (which is a xenofiction) and having an animal on the cover. This book very much has a human protagonist, so if you're looking for an animal POV-book similar to White Fox you might be disappointed.
But honestly even if it was different than I initially expected it to be, I had a great time reading this book. I quickly got invested in Kiki and her life and struggles. She's a simple character, but she does really work as a bit of an audience stand-in. And she isn't completely devoid of personality or goals, either. She's just not the most complex character you'll ever come across. She's overall relatable and likable and you do root for her. The same applies to the other characters: not super complex, but likable and rounded enough to keep the audience engaged. Characters like the Dream Eldest were interesting, and of course Bobbi made for a nice sidekick. I also liked Kiki's eventual friend Lilian, the duo had a nice chemistry and one can really buy their friendship even if they don't share that many scenes together.
The real draw of the book is not the characters, though, but the world it creates. The book is obviously about dreams, and Jiatong perfectly managed to bring the whimsy and dream-like qualities of such a concept to the reader. The dream world is interesting, unique, fun, perilous and mysterious. Pretty much everything we need to stay invested. It is built up gradually throughout the book as Kiki learns more about the dream world as a new Dream Keeper, and the world-building is all done very well. At some points I was going to be worried the book from now on was just going to be Kiki entering other people's dreams to help them, but it was way more than that. Especially when the nightmare forces entered the picture things got intense and very interesting.
Overall I can't wait to read more about the dream world and these characters in future installments. And even Kiki's real-life struggles I'm invested in as well, even if they're relatively more mundane compared to battling nightmare forces. This was a great first installment to a new series.
Rating: 4/5
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