Dreamless

Josephine Angelini
Tasked with descending to the underworld and killing the Furies, Helen must endure hellish torture whenever she goes to sleep – she wanders around the various levels of hell with no idea how to complete her task, and she’s beginning to suffer from extreme exhaustion. Although she still trains with the Delos clan, Helen and Lucas are coming to terms with the fact that they cannot be together. Lucas believes that the only way Helen will complete her quest is if he leaves her alone completely, so he tells her he doesn’t want to see her again and that he never loved her. Distraught, Helen carries on with her mission, and for the first time meets another person down in the shadowy underworld: Orion, descended from Adonis and with the power to control desire, he is the heir to the house of Rome and an outcast. He’s also kind of hot. Confused by her conflicting emotions but glad to have an ally in hell, Helen begins to realize the enormity of her task…
This is the second book in a series and as such may contain spoilers for book one Starcrossed.(Read our review of Starcrossed here)
I was so excited to read this book. I loved ‘Starcrossed’, stayed up all night so I could finish and almost threw the book across the room when I finished it as I was so desperate to read the next book straight away. So the second ‘Dreamless’ arrived I started it and although I wouldn’t say I was disappointed it was nowhere near as good as I expected it to be. This could have been the result of my high expectations, it could be middle book syndrome, I don’t know, but I didn’t feel the same urge to carry on reading the way I had with the first book. I read ‘Dreamless’ in three parts, a couple of weeks between each section, I normally devour books in one sitting, but to be fair this is not the first second book in a series that I have read in parts lately.
This almost makes it sound as though I disliked ‘Dreamless’, but I did genuinely enjoy the book and am looking forward to the conclusion, I just didn’t get swept away to the same extent this time. I would recommend reading ‘Starcrossed’ again if it’s a while since you read it. There is very little recapping and I did at times struggle to remember what was happening.
It was lovely to return to characters I loved so much before. I know very little Greek Mythology, but this book, more than the first left me with a thirst to find out more. I hurt alongside Helen and Lucas as they struggled to contain their feelings for each other and act as cousins should. My heart broke for them as they realised how impossible that was. There was some attempt to introduce a love triangle to the story, but I didn’t find it overly convincing. I loved Orion as a character, in fact I like him much more than Lucas, but it is so obvious that he is not the one for Helen. There were times where I almost disliked Helen as I felt that she was leading him on and settling for second best.
As in the previous book the secondary characters play a very important part. They support Helen in her quest in the underworld, but their feeling of being useless is reflected well in the reader. They also provide respite from the trauma that the main characters of Helen, Lucas and Orion are going through. Although there were times I wanted to scream at the characters for being either so stupid or self obsessed that they couldn’t see what was happening, it was almost refreshing to see that people, including demigods are fallible and they don’t always get things right.
Verdict: So whilst ‘Dreamless’ didn’t grab me in the same way that ‘Starcrossed’ had, I did enjoy the book. It serves as a good bridge to what promises to be an explosive climax.
Reviewed by Alison