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1.5
Shadows in Dream Stone (Book #1)
ByPublisher Description
What if the laws of nature resulted in imprisonment at the hands of political tyrants? In SHADOWS IN DREAM STONE, the first book of this dystopian sci-fi trilogy, DARK STARS, Abaddon Ordell is a teacher, sister, and wife turned prisoner. In the wake of a devastating miscarriage, Abaddon is cruelly handed over to the law by her husband and condemned to the infamous Dream Stone prison.
Hemmed in by aggressive inmates, guards steeped in misogyny, and a Warden whose sympathy is nothing but a sham, she grapples with her consuming grief and a deep rage over the oppressive forces that govern her reproductive rights. She isn’t sure she will survive, or if she even wants to.
Just when all seems lost, an unexpected ally offers her the strength and love she needs to endure this darkness, if only she has the courage to trust her.
As the dangers of Dream Stone escalate, Abaddon turns her suffering into strength to plot a revolutionary scheme that targets the heart of the oppressive regime. She just has to make it out of prison alive first.
Abaddon’s tale of survival serves as a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who fight against the chains of injustice, and a reminder of the thin line between order and oppression.
Hemmed in by aggressive inmates, guards steeped in misogyny, and a Warden whose sympathy is nothing but a sham, she grapples with her consuming grief and a deep rage over the oppressive forces that govern her reproductive rights. She isn’t sure she will survive, or if she even wants to.
Just when all seems lost, an unexpected ally offers her the strength and love she needs to endure this darkness, if only she has the courage to trust her.
As the dangers of Dream Stone escalate, Abaddon turns her suffering into strength to plot a revolutionary scheme that targets the heart of the oppressive regime. She just has to make it out of prison alive first.
Abaddon’s tale of survival serves as a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who fight against the chains of injustice, and a reminder of the thin line between order and oppression.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesShadows in Dream Stone (Book #1) Reviews
1.5
“thank you to netgalley for the arc in exchange for a brutally honest review.
okay, stop me when this sounds too much like the united states of america. a woman has a miscarriage and is sent to prison —
anyways, “the shadow at dream stone” is a sci-fi novel set far enough in the future that you’d expect at least some imagination, yet it somehow manages to feel like a lightly fictionalized op-ed written during a bad news cycle. the premise boils down to: men harm women, this is bad, and we should all be very aware of how bad it is. which—correct! absolutely true! but also not exactly a revelatory thesis, and certainly not one that needs to be delivered with the subtlety of a brick through a glass window.
this book feels like feminism 101 with a sci-fi skin slapped on it. not “let’s explore systemic oppression through character and worldbuilding,” but “please sit down while i explain my beliefs to you, in case you were unclear.” entire sections felt unnecessary, like the plot had politely stepped aside so the author could say, “hey. hey. listen. here’s what i think.” one chapter in particular reads less like narrative and more like a poorly written manifesto wearing a trench coat. and, while the author describes all of the woes going on in a 2025 modern world, they conveniently leave out any mentions of israel and palestine. while their main character knows krav maga. interesting indeed.
the writing leans hard into telling instead of showing. emotions are explained. motivations are explained. themes are explained. nothing is allowed to breathe or exist without a narrator hovering nearby, anxiously making sure you understand the point. the descriptions don’t help much either. everything is… bland. nothing stood out. nothing lingered. it all kind of slid right off my brain like lukewarm soup, except for the main character who was described like a mary sue self-insert in a bad hunger games fanfiction. i mean, she literally describes herself in a mirror at one point.
and oh my god, the editing. this book desperately needed several more rounds of it. typos everywhere. missing quotation marks. repeated paragraphs. repeated phrases in the same sentence. a character’s name being misspelled. at one point i genuinely checked my progress because i thought my ebook was glitching. it wasn’t. the book just did that.
some of the language choices around characters of color were also… not great. “prominent asian features” is doing absolutely nothing except raising questions. and the implication that in the future “almost everyone looks the same” because of interracial unions made me stop, stare at the page, and whisper “hello???” to no one in particular. this is why we hire sensitivity readers. this is literally why. this book needs more of them.
the sisters didn’t feel like real siblings. the younger sister calling the older one “big sister” as a nickname felt deeply unnatural, like something out of a poorly localized anime. honestly, abaddon should’ve been the younger sister. she acts more like one. their dynamic never rang true, which made their emotional moments fall flat when they should’ve hit hardest. you can tell the author doesn’t have sisters, or if they do, don’t have a good relationship with them and is playing pretend.
the romance subplot was similarly undercooked. the progression was basically: not talking → vaguely friends → breakup → sex. no buildup. no chemistry. kila, especially, felt barely sketched in, which made it hard to care about the relationship at all. i was less invested and more confused, like i’d missed several chapters by accident.
the humor also did this book no favors. for a sci-fi story set centuries in the future, the jokes felt aggressively millennial. quippy. smug. painfully dated. lines meant to be empowering landed like a marvel “strong feminist heroine” moment, complete with imaginary applause. quotes like “i wonder if you looked both ways before deciding to get on my nerves today” made me physically recoil. cringe. gods know how i finished this book. and, it’s 400 years in the future. why are we still joking about JFK’s assassination? has no one else been assassinated in that 400 years?
but, listen i am nothing if not fair. there is a single moment that is the sole reason this book earned 1.5 stars instead of one. full commitment. no hesitation. no cowardice. the main character, while being sexually assaulted, literally bites off the man’s dick. i’d say i support women’s wrongs, but she was so right for doing that.”
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