Customer Reviews

Perchance to Dream: Theatre Illuminata #2

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
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The magical adventures of Bertie and the Theatre Illuminata continue in this charming sequel to Lisa Mantchev's Eyes Like Stars. This time, the stakes are higher, the mysteries are deeper and the romance is stronger. After discovering some of the secrets behind her origins and getting permission to continue living at the theatre, Bertie must find a way to understand the outside world and save someone very dear to her.

When Nate is kidnapped by the horrible Sea Goddess from The Little Mermaid, Bertie must set out to free him. Along with her faithful fairy sidekicks Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Moth and Mustardseed (the fairies from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream), Bertie uses her magic to journey to lands outside the theatre and rescue Nate. Along the way, Bertie meets her father and learns about some of the strange secrets behind the world's magic. She also has very vivid dreams about Nate, and finds that she is falling even more in love with him -despite the irresistible Ariel (a spirit from Shakespeare's The Tempest) lurking close by. Bertie is thrown into an inevitable love triangle, and must discover the path to her true love while searching for the path to defeat the Sea Goddess.

Even more enjoyable than Eyes Like Stars, I found Perchance to Dream to have even more magic and adventure than its predecessor. It was a breath of fresh air to get out of the theatre and see what other fantastic things Mantchev has up her sleeve. The writing style is also noticeably improved from the first book, weaving even more lush and vivid pictures of the characters and the locations. I was a little surprised by the sudden decrease in Shakespeare references (and personally kind of missed it), but this change helped the series build its own mythology and stand apart from Shakespeare.

Perchance to Dream is a worthy sequel (and, in my opinion, an even better one) to Eyes Like Stars. There's more romance, magic and adventure just waiting for readers to explore.

And I do mean trip, as in trippy. Lisa Mantchev creates a world that is more theatrical than real, even outside the walls of the magical theater from her first book, Eyes Like Stars. Here Bertie and her sidekicks hit the road in a caravan drawn by mechanical horses, in search of the missing Nate and maybe even Bertie's father, the Mysterious Stranger.

The three fairies from A Midsummer Night's Dream continue to offer comic relief, e.g., when Peaseblossom falls in love with the marzipan groom on a wedding cake. A new character named Waschbar is part-raccoon and a thief, but only of unwanted things, he says. Bertie, now the Mistress of Revels, wins a magical journal from him that allows her to keep writing the script of their adventure as they go, although she tends to write in haste and leave out crucial elements, resulting in various complications.

Ariel, the wind spirit, comes along for the ride, and he persists in trying to charm Bertie, even as she worries about her sailor friend, Nate, who is in the clutches of Sedna, the sea witch.

This is a fairly episodic book, with characters and events popping in and out as if--well, as if Bertie were on a stage.

The author's efforts to make Bertie's theatrical world magical are sometimes fresh and beautiful, but other times are distracting or confusing. A scene in a market and another on a surreal circus train are lovely set pieces. Of course, the fairies will tell you that the best part of the circus train is that it has one car entirely dedicated to pies, in alphabetical order.

Bertie is still a bit hard to like, since she tends to seem selfish and to yell at her friends and family. But she can also be brave and determined. In this book, she does meet her father, who is not very good at being human, let alone a parent.

Readers looking for some romance will be pleased by how much Ariel and Nate care for Bertie, although we see more of the wind spirit than of the sailor in this volume. An ongoing plot point is that Bertie must deal with her feelings for both of them, and with the feminist suspicion that what she really wants is to stop having them claim her so that she can own herself.

Of course, Sedna makes a deliciously terrifying villainess.

Perchance to Dream is a little jumbly, and I found myself getting exasperated with Bertie in spots, but I do like the whole theatrical premise and the things Mantchev does with it. If you're new to this author's work, I would suggest you read Eyes Like Stars first!

Lisa Mantchev outdoes herself in this lush and exotic sequel to EYES LIKE STARS. In many ways it is quite different from the first book, but stunningly so, and I think will make readers gain a whole new level of appreciation for Lisa's writing.

Beatrice Shakespeare Smith never thought she'd leave the theatre, but here she is, on the road to save Nate, her pirate sweetheart, from the hands of the nefarious Sedna the Sea Witch, accompanied by her four fairy friends and the seductive air spirit Ariel. Armed with the magical powers of the Mistress of Revels, Bertie is able to write herself in and out of situations. But not even her power with words can prepare her for revelations about her parents' past, a battle over her heart, and the ultimate encounter with Sedna.

If I could eat just one book, I think this would have to be it. In Lisa Mantchev's hands, words aren't merely lines and swirls of black on white: they come alive, playing with one another, dancing like fairies themselves. The book is chock-full of wordplay and descriptions so rich you just want to roll them around and around on your tongue. Lisa's writing really sets the tone and setting of PERCHANCE TO DREAM into a world that seems to always be dissolving and changing at the corners of our eyes.

All the characters you loved from EYES LIKE STARS come back in full force in this stunning sequel. Bertie may be the tip of the love triangle, but she's far from your typical YA heroine: she is spunky and independent, and would never consider giving herself up for love. We get to see a lot more of Ariel than Nate in this Theatre Illuminata installment, which is deliciously swoon-worthy in a sensual and dangerous way. And Bertie's encounters with new characters--Sedna, the Scrimshander, various vagabonds she meets along her journey (including the traveling circus)--are excellent additions to the series, each one an almost surreal section.

For those who enjoy incredibly beautiful writing and a unique cast of varied characters, Lisa Mantchev's books are not to be missed. Lovers of EYES LIKE STARS may be slightly jarred by the lack of backstory and the completely different change of pace and setting, but you just might also be fall under Lisa's writing spell, as I irrevocably am.

The second book in Lisa Mantchev's critically acclaimed Théātre Illuminata trilogy will surely be met with thunderous applause as it not only builds upon the fanciful and outrageous antics of Act One (EYES LIKE STARS) but takes the cast and crew's adventures to a whole new level of enchanting. While some of the memorable characters from the first act seem to be taking Act Two off, a handful of new talent --- bringing with them some exhilarating and very suspenseful plot developments --- take center stage, whisking readers along on a wild and always unexpected journey that doesn't stop (literally) until the last word has been read...or is it...written?

Always the feisty ingénue, Beatrice Shakespeare Smith has taken her show on the road in PERCHANCE TO DREAM. The Mistress of Revels as well as the Teller of Tales, Bertie has the power to make events or scene changes happen by describing them in her magic journal. She can also spin stories into reality by voicing them out loud. But as she soon discovers, outside the safe cocoon of the Théātre, nothing goes exactly as planned. In fact, despite her best intentions, everything starts to go terribly wrong.

For one, Nate --- the swashbuckling pirate from Act One who captured Bertie's heart --- has been captured by the Sedna, the Sea Goddess...and being a particularly nasty old crone, she refuses to let him go. Bertie, meanwhile, has vowed to rescue him with the help of her rambunctious fairies (Moth, Peaseblossom, Cobweb, and Mustardseed), a moody and especially smitten air spirit (Ariel), and a sneak-thief who kind of looks like a gigantic raccoon standing up. Add a hulking and mysterious birdman that (who?) swoops down on Bertie at the most inopportune moments (for a secret reason not even I will disclose!), and you have a motley caravan of characters who may not all make it to the end of the production if they have anything to do with it.

Now, about that especially smitten air spirit. For most of the book, Bertie is caught in a thorny love triangle between hunky Nate (in her dreams) and devoted Ariel (in reality), and while you might suspect the competition for their beloved's heart would grow tiring, it doesn't. Mantchev does a stellar job pitting the two against each other, so much so that it's hard to know who to root for moment to moment. The contest over which suitor Bertie will choose carries the action forward like an anchor, so any readers who might get briefly disoriented amidst all the scene changes, costume adjustments, script add-ins, and so on, can grab on and be willfully tugged along for the whirlwind ride.

Mantchev doesn't disappoint in PERCHANCE TO DREAM --- nor does she drop any balls she threw in the air in EYES LIKE STARS. Her rich and often humorous prose is once again filled with delightful references to Shakespeare's plays, from Romeo & Juliet to A Midsummer Night's Dream to Henry VIII. Her characters are as wonky and alive as ever. And as for the ending? Let's just say it's a showstopper.

One can only hope such raucous fun and games continue for the Grand Finale!

...because it's incredibly trippy in places (also, the protagonist actually quotes Alice in Wonderland at one point, and the author mentions something of Alice in Wonderland in passing).

This book is a sequel to _Eyes Like Stars_, and Bertie, four fairies, a sneakthief, and Ariel leave the magical Theatre Illuminata to rescue her friend Nate, who was kidnapped by Sedna, a seagoddess. Another agenda of Bertie's is to meet her father, and bring him back to the theater with her.

I loved this book. I love the characters (Bertie, Ariel, the fairies, the sneakthief). And I would like to say that even though there is a love triangle in this book, it is not like many love triangles in other YA books that I've read (usually two are in love, and the third person's love is for one of the first two, and it's either unrequited or seen as friendship; in this book, Bertie finds she loves both men equally). And in the beginning of the book, she has to share her days with Ariel traveling on a caravan, and her nights meeting with Nate in her dreams. Personally, I'm pulling for Ariel. I can't wait for the next book in the series!

Eyes Like Stars, the first book in the Thèātre Illuminata trilogy, was one of my favourite reads of 2009. In fact, in my review of Eyes Like Stars I wrote that it was "a book that captured me from the first pages, with characters that grabbed me from their first appearances, and a world which enveloped me the second I entered it." As you can imagine then, the quality and originality of Eyes Like Stars meant that I had very high hopes for Perchance To Dream... as well as worries that it might not match up to the high standards set by the first.

It was silly of me to think that though, as Perchance To Dream is a worthy follow-up to Eyes Like Stars. It's funny, it's creative, it's full of twists and turns, and Mantchev's writing style is still as wonderful and whimsical as ever. Her blend of prose and scenes written as a script add a real shine to the story. It is the little details that can add that final touch, like sprinkles on a frosted cupcake, and in Perchance To Dream has those sprinkles in spades.

It's main character Bertie that really shines here though. She is one of the strongest female leads in I've read in YA for a while. A lot of people mistake "strong female character" as a girl who is just physically strong when really it is much more than that. Bertie has grown since we first met her, from a girl searching for a way to stay to a person searching for herself. She is strong-willed, the rescuer rather than the damsel. And she plays off well with the rest of the cast too. Unlike in some stories today, she is not an object to be won, nor a prop passed around to continue the plot along. Instead she and the rest of the characters - good, bad and otherwise - work together to build the story skywards, even if inside of it they work against each other.

As I wrote in my review for Eyes Like Stars that it is the reviews for the books I love the most that are hardest to write. It's a real testament to the brilliance of Lisa Mantchev that she not only stumped me once with Eyes Like Stars, but again with Perchance To Dream.

It's just going to be a long intermission while I wait for the final act.

In PERCHANCE TO DREAM, all of the main characters from the first book are back - Bertie, Nate, Ariel, and my favorite, the fairies! But this time their story takes them outside of Thèātre Illuminata and into the world.

They are on a quest to find Nate, who was taken by the Sea Goddess at the end of the first story. The Company uses Bertie's magic - for she is now the Mistress of Revels, the Teller of Tales, and can write how their story is going to go. But she has to be careful, because what is written can happen in different ways.

Along the way, we meet several more characters, such as the Thief and Bertie's fathers. And while Bertie loves Nate, she is soon finding that she also has feelings for the air elemental, Ariel. But who does she love more? You'll have to read to find out!

This was a neat sequel to Lisa Mantchev's EYES LIKE STARS. I feel like this was slightly more of a love story and I enjoyed that. The book is so creative. The story and setting and action that this story brings into your head are so full of imagination and fun.

My favorite characters from the first book, the fairies, are back! And they are just as funny. I want my own little fairies to come provide comic relief for me!

PERCHANCE TO DREAM sets up the next book in the series nicely, and I can't wait to get to read it!

Reviewed by: Andrea

I was eagerly awaiting the second instalment of Lisa Mantchev's Theatre Illuminata trilogy having read the first one, Eyes like Stars and been absolutely enchanted by it.
PTC did not disappoint me, it takes our main cast on a road trip of discovery as they seek to reclaim one of their own: Nate the pirate, from the clutches of the evil sea witch, Sedna. En route they encounter perils set in a wicked and wild landscape, both the perils and landscape are in part Bertie's making, as she struggles to harness her word power as Mistress of the Revels.
It is a voyage of discovery for all our merry troupe, Bertie and the four fairies: Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Mustardseed and Moth with the ever alluring Ariel accompanying somewhat begrudgingly (Nate represents a rivalry for Bertie's affection). They meet various new and magical characters along the way, and are joined on their journey by Waschbar the thief, claimer of unwanted things, and his two ferrets who add to the general mayhem unwittingly (though sometimes intentionally) unleashed by the mischievous fairies.
There is a heart-warming sub-plot as Bertie gets some answers to her lost origins (which I won't spoil by telling you!), and it was nice to see Bertie develop and embrace her role as Mistress of the Revels. The plot weaves in and out leading to the unavoidable battle with Sedna to reclaim Nate, but Sedna does not surrender her captives easily and issues Bertie an ultimatum that could spell the end for her, Nate and Ariel, a situation that will resonate with a great many readers! But you'll have to read Perchance to Dream to find out what that ultimatum was!
This series is a joy to read, it's magical, bright, colourful, richly described and very funny. It has a language and character that I've found to be totally endearing, totally charming and exquisitely unique. Older readers will appreciate the dry humour and emotional sub-plots, younger readers will fall in love with the fairies and the sparkle of the stories.
Sadly the stage lights have dimmed for another year for me as I now await the swan-song of the series.
But dear Lisa Mantchev...stage centre please, and take a much deserved bow!
I'll be awaiting your encore! (And I bet it'll be made of shiny awesome! hehe!)

Beatrice Shakespeare Smith AKA Bertie has set the stage for a new scene in her life... She's taking the play on the road, along with Ariel (who may or may not be the love of her life) and the fairies (who may or may not eat every word Bertie has). Our merry cast is, of course, on a mission to save Nate, the swashbuckling pirate (who may or may not be the love of Bertie's life), as he's been kidnapped by the Sea Goddess. If this doesn't make any sense to you, stop, and read the first book in this series (Eyes Like Stars: Theatre Illuminata, Act I) first! Along the way they'll encounter a new cast of characters - how could they not? They're no longer in the Theatre, after all, so they're in need of new actors.

Will they find the way to the Sea Goddess's lair before it's too late? Will Bertie figure out which of the two she really loves? Will she realize just how powerful her words are and how to control them? Is there any cake in the world that can make the fairies cry uncle? You'll get answers to some of those questions in this book and in ways that are sure to entertain - I for one was seeing Cirque du Soleil in my mind as I read several chapters, only to find her thank them at the end of the book. I'm ready for more.

This was a neat sequel to Lisa Mantchev's first book, Eyes Like Stars. I feel like this was slightly more of a love story and I enjoyed that. The book is so creative. The story and setting and action that this story brings into your head is so full of imagination and fun.

My favorite characters from the first book, the fairies are back! And they are just as funny. I want my own little fairies to provide comic relief for me!

Perchance to Dream sets up the next book in the series nicely, and I can't wait to get to read it!