Review: The Luminaries by Susan Dennard
The Luminaries started as a choose your own adventure twitter story and has now become a separate wonderful book. The book follows Winnie, a teenager who has grown up in a town run by The Luminaries, a group of people who protect the wider world from the nightmares some forests produce. Her family used to be Luminary members in good standing, but after her father was caught as a Diana, their rival group, Winnie's family have been ostracized by the broader group. Winnie, who has not been able to formally train as a hunter, decides to enter the first trial anyway. Things escalate from here.
This book is truly an incredibly fun wild ride. I was absolutely thinking about this book whenever I wasn't able to read it. It takes place over about a week and has the fast pace and high action you would expect from a book that takes place over such a short amount of time. I absolutely loved the book.
My favorite aspect of this book was the way Dennard talks about community, family, and anger. Winnie is incredibly angry about the way her family has been treated, and she is especially jarred when people start to accept them back into the fold. Experiencing this with her is such a strong emotional core to the story. The dichotomy between wanting desperately to be a part of the group but also seeing the flaws in the group, seeing their failings, and being so angry about how they treated you and how they aren't actually facing their own wrongdoings. Winnie does not want to be treated poorly any longer, but she also wants the people who treated her poorly to actually say they did something wrong and not have them just start being nice to her.
I also liked that Dennard gave Winnie a group of girls who had been kind to her before, and now Winnie is able to actually let some of her walls down, and they are allowed to fully embrace her; Winnie has a really fun friend group. It is excellent to see Winnie want so deeply to be a good friend to people who were kind to her when no one else was. I especially liked how sweet it was that Winnie wanted to make sure she got her friends adequate birthday presents. I also loved the scene about 3/4 of the way through the book where they are just having fun. It was such a lovely moment to release tension and show a connection.
The world of this book is also so excellent. I loved the way the nightmare's existence in the forest impacted so much of the culture around the Luminaries but also just how interesting the lore was. I especially liked the way Dennard makes sure to highlight the global nature of the luminaries, she truly does a great job of making this a foundational and normal part of her world. These groups are all over the world, doing the same hard work of protecting people from the forests.
I really was impressed by the way Dennard wrote Winnie's relationship with the nightmares. She is afraid of them but she is also reverent of them just as much. It is a really interesting dichotomy being explored in this story. She is almost obsessed with the lore surrounding the nightmares, having an encyclopedic knowledge of the creatures she encounters. She is a delightful little nerd. But whenever she actually encounters these creatures herself she is completely awed by them, which almost seems to heighten the fear. I really loved the way her encounters with nightmares made her want to edit the book she learned this information from, it was such a fun way to engage with this world.
I think there are a lot of aspects of this story that people who really liked Cassandra Clare's books will immediately latch onto.
I have more to say about this book, but I think I am going to mull it over for a little bit and come back and expand. But basically, this book is action-packed and fun and I loved it.
I gave this book five stars.
