Dreamslinger  Graci Kim

 

Dreamslinger  Graci Kim
Penguin Random House (2025)
Novel, 295 pages, Paperback
ISBN 978 1 776 95 343 1

 

New Zealand author Graci Kim follows her highly successful 

Gifted Clans trilogy with another lively and humorous fantasy series which also draws on Korean mythology.

Dreamslinger introduces Aria Loveridge (14), an ordinary girl with an extraordinary genetic mutation which makes her a dreamslinger.   Aria has a bright personality – her father, Professor Jack Loveridge, calls her ‘sparkler’ after the firework. Aria has accepted that being a dreamslinger makes her different in many ways. She feels her emotions more deeply than ordinary people and this has consequences.

Dreamslingers all have powerful dreams about the same mystical world, The Asleep. The emotions generated there can have fatal results. (Aria’s Korean-born mother died in a major dreamslinger Outburst, when Aria was only four.) Undaunted, Jack has campaigned for acceptance of the dreamslingers and his ‘restrain, contain, maintain’ programme is carried out in the Resthaven Home for Dreamslingers in Almiro, Texas.

 Aria is one of the young residents there whose dreams are researched. When they wake, the dreamslingers can safely unleash their Outbursts of pent-up emotions in chambers built to withstand the fires, hurricanes, ice storms and poisonous acids they generate. Understandably, there is public unease about the potential menace of dreamslingers. Worse follows when Jack’s Resthaven launch ceremony is hi-jacked by Tae, a Royal Slinger from the tiny hermit kingdom of Royal Hanguk (There, the Royal League trains teenagers to harness their outbursts and even bring dream beasts, such as Tae’s bloom dragon, Jaya, back from The Asleep).  Aria is blamed for the fiasco which results.

 With the future of her father’s work and the survival of Resthaven in jeopardy, Aria has to accept the challenge of King Lee Ogu and journey to Royal Hanguk, to compete in the Trials to be accepted as a Fellow. Her secret intention is to learn everything she can to help her father’s research, especially how dream beasts are controlled.

‘She was going to find the evidence she needed to prove that this reckless elite League was dangerous and plotting something sinister.’

 Hanguk turns out to be ‘nestled on an island inside Seoul’.  (Aria’s driver, Nam Changdo, compares it to Vatican City’s position within Rome.) Graci Kim has a powerful imagination so that her Hanguk is even more amazing than the Vatican. Menus there change according to the diner’s mood, while beds will adjust their comfort levels provided that they are instructed in rhyme.

 Aria passes a preliminary test of her powers, one of only a hundred trainees to do so. (Another successful candidate is Tui Walker, a New Zealander.) King Lee Ogu warns them that only twenty will become Fellows, so the competition will be fierce.

Aria and Tui are chosen to live in the Spring Palace of the bloom dragon during the Trials. The following two-thirds of the book follow Aria through the various challenges and her growing understanding of how the magical qualities of The Asleep can be used. Aria makes friends and some enemies. She also discovers that rather than being ordinary, she is truly exceptional.

 Dreamslinger is an exciting, sometimes alarming and often amusing adventure, with the bonus of a richly detailed dreamscape.

And dragons. There are lots of dragons.

 An unusual aspect of Dreamslinger is that the first edition (2025) 

used not one but two cover    

An Unusual aspect of Dreamslinger is that the first edition (2025) used not one but two cover illustrations, for different regions. Vivien To’s picture, used on the editions for the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, shows Aria in a hanbok (a traditional Korean dress, described on p.89) while a flying dragon circles her.  This illustration reflects Aria’s joint American and Korean heritage. The Disney Hyperion cover for the United States market, created by Jessica Fong, shows Aria riding on the back of a dragon; looking more like a young American superhero. The two covers may be seen to reflect different attitudes to DEI (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion).

The book also provides maps (by Virginia Allan) of The Asleep and the Kingdom of Royal Hanguk, as well as Rachel Hamilton’s music for Aria’s lullaby.

The second volume in the series, about Aria’s novice training, is called Royalslinger.

Graci Kim’s website at www.gracikim.com includes Teacher Notes and printable resources.

 

Trevor Agnew 

18 May 2025  [Review 3768]