Archer and Kaylie are dreamtreaders, people given special abilities to enter the Dream and given the duty to preserve the Dream. However, in the previous book, their enemies had deceived Archer and together had destroyed the barrier that protected our world from the Dream, wrecking disaster on the world. A special force of only three at any given time in history, dreamtreaders are taught how to use their will to change and to create. These skills, though meant for use in the Dream, must be used now to fix the Rift and bring order back into the chaos. However, their enemies are also at work. Deceptive and conniving, Kara has been perfecting the Harlequin Veil, the perfect tool for deceiving the world and brainwashing people into believing that everything is wonderful and perfect, even though the opposite is quite true. To confound the efforts of the Dreamtreaders, charges are brought against Archer who is taken to the highest court a dreamtreader could ever enter. Nick, their fellow Dreamtreader, seems lost to reality, sucked into the false security created by the Veil.

As a book geared to 8-12 year olds, The War for the Waking World meets several essential criteria. The story is exciting with quite a few twists and turns. It moves very quickly and jumps from character to character, telling the story from multiple points of view. The main characters are special, especially Archer who is 15 and Kaylie who is 8. They both have special powers, enabling them to create things using their will, fly, and do other amazing things. Which 8-12 year old kid doesn't dream of having superpowers of some kind? 15-year old Archer also defeats his nemesis and is able to outsmart those who were scheming against him. The War for the Waking World will be appealing to upper elementary/middle grade students for these reasons. Parents will like it because it is an allegory and has interesting themes woven into the series.

Since it is middle grade fiction, it moved too quickly and the solutions were too simple. Because the dreamtreaders are able to create almost anything using their will, I found the book to be a little too predictable and a little too convenient. Most of the time, the main characters could easily come up with a solution to the problem, and sometimes those solutions were really strange. Yet, the story sometimes seemed inconsistent, for at other times, they were unable to use their will to solve a problem. It might excite many 8-12 year olds, but as an adult who normally enjoys young adult and children's fiction a lot, I wasn't impressed. Admittedly, this is the only book of the series that I have read and I did not know the backstory before reading it. Honestly though, I don't think having understood the backstory would raise my opinion of the book much.

Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas Nelson for an electronic copy of this book for review. All opinions contained above are my own.

This is a very entertaining book, it can stand on its own, but you will know more about the characters and their special abilities if you read the preceding books in the series! Can you imagine being able to enter and explore events in your dreams?
Archer Keaton and his sister Kaylie can do this, and their abilities may save the world when it is threatened by Kara, a girl who has the power to control the world!
You will enjoy their adventures with their former enemies, Rigby, a prisoner of Kara and his Uncle, Doc Scoville as they use their imaginations to stop Kara and an evil enemy, Bezeal!

A slam dunk of a great story! This will be with me for weeks to come!

As a tween/teen, I so enjoyed speculative fiction, but I was frequently exposed to subjects that I did not want to read, such as witchcraft, far-fetched science fiction, etc. I would have liked to have had books like this one (and this series) available to read.

This book is the third in the series, but I didn’t realize that when I began reading it. The upside is that the author explains what happened previously, and I eventually caught up. The downside is that by not reading the first two, I missed out on some great reading. I’ll go back now and read the first two, but doing so will not build the wonderful anticipation brought by reading a series in order.

Had I read the first two books, I would have appreciated the characters, plot, drama, and so on better, of course. But as it is, the characters were drawn well enough that I had a good sense of what their struggles were and where they were likely to wind up. The plot was fairly fast moving, engaging, and interesting to read. I liked that there were spiritual elements at play in the characters and plot, but the book wasn’t preachy. The main character does indeed face his pride and is humbled. Books with true, Biblical consequences are rare.

I think it was CS Lewis that said, “The world does not need more Christian literature. What it needs is more Christians writing good literature.” This book falls into that category. Truths, consequences, redemption, all without having anything shoved down anyone’s throat.

I gratefully received this book as an eARC from the author, publisher, and NetGalley in exchange for my unbiased review.

War for the Waking World was not a good book to me. The organization of the book was not well done and it started in media res without context, but poorly done. The whole thing was confusing and I just didn’t appreciate it. I don’t mean to be cruel, but I just didn’t enjoy.

I voluntarily reviewed an ARC of this book Via NetGalley.