The Dreamer

The Black Stone Cycle, Book One

by

Linda Patricia Cleary

Great start to a new YA space adventure series about young misfits fighting a secret organization intent on taking over the universe.

Sixteen-year-old Ash Bennett has grown up traveling around the solar system with her parents in a space vessel of her engineer father’s design. But as she’s gotten older, she’s come to realize the secretive nature of their existence and is starting to believe her parents are keeping secrets from her. When she returns to tragedy at their ship docked on the surface of Phobos after a routine supply run, she becomes tragically certain that they had been holding out on her. Now she’s on the run from killers – Mind Squad Agents – with three new companions she’s not at all sure she can trust. 

The Dreamer is a marvelous beginning to this exciting new young adult science fiction space-adventure series by Linda Patricia Cleary, and the story hits the ground running, even as the author undertakes the heavy lifting of crafting a unique and robust universe for the story. The story unfolds from multiple points of view, Ash’s and those of other major characters, with great effect. 

Ash is a typical teenager, full of curiosity, emotions, new feelings, and uncertain about her current life and her future, and that’s before tragedy strikes. The author immediately builds suspense with Ash’s thoughts on her and her parents’ solitary lifestyle and the odd, recurring dreams that leave her waking in a sweat. Now on her own, Ash must grow up quickly while discovering she’s developing strange new abilities like those of the universe’s much-maligned Pathers. 

Joining her in the story is Edan Wagner, whose parents lead the notorious space pirates, the Rippers. He’s trying hard to walk away from that life, and his parents aren’t having it. The twins, Isaac and Isabel, are Pathers with strong kinetic and telepathic abilities, and are searching for their own parents, who disappeared from their home on Mars. They, too, are being hunted, as are pathers throughout the solar system, by whom and for what purpose no one seems to know. Each of these characters has a strong, intriguing underlying storyline that I look forward to learning more about as the series progresses. 

The plot is vibrant with compelling backstories of first contact and Earth’s demise, leaving it a spoiled, uninhabitable rock in space. Alien races, such as the Kai and Qreegs, freely mingle with humans throughout the solar system, which advances in technology had opened to exploration and settlement for quite some time by the time of the events in the book. There are plenty of bad guys to escape from as the new friends learn to trust each other and seek answers about their parents. Their group of misfit young adults slowly expands as they rescue others in need along the way. As this is the start of a new series, not all questions are answered, leaving ample territory for future books. 

I recommend THE DREAMER to readers of young adult science fiction and space adventures. 

I voluntarily reviewed this after receiving an Advance Review Copy from Reedsy Discovery.