The Palace of Dreams

As far as Rosie Oaks and her friends know, the Earth is gone—swallowed by the Nothing King just after the heroes escaped to a faraway planet to regroup and seek help. Now Rosie, her friends Germ and Aria, her ghost friend Ebb, her mother, and her long-lost brother are relying on the leftover members of the League of Witch-Hunters, Wanda and Clara, to help them find a way out of this mess. But when they land at a hotel on the planet Glimmer 5, they discover that Rufus—the one man who may have the tools to defeat the Nothing King—is missing. Then, a messenger from the Nothing King arrives with unexpected news: Earth still exists, but only because the Nothing King hasn’t yet destroyed the Museum of Imagined Things, home of humanity’s dreams and healed souls. Once he does, Earth will fall with it. 

Rosie is a brave and intelligent protagonist who devises a daring way to find Rufus—by traveling through objects that are bigger on the inside. She discovers him hiding inside a memory, where he’s been concealing the Museum of Imagined Things from the Nothing King. He entrusts it to Rosie, and through the Museum’s power, she begins recruiting old friends and new allies while ferreting out a traitor in their midst. She rallies everyone on Glimmer 5 to join the fight, and on their journey back to Earth, they make a crucial stop in Limbo—a purgatory for ghosts—where they find even more reinforcements. 

Along the way, Rosie grapples with shocking surprises, strange betrayals, and the challenges that come with growing up. She learns to embrace who she is and all the oddities that come with being a thirteen-year-old witch hunter, all while battling the greatest and most terrifying supernatural entity their world has ever known. 

The Palace of Dreams brings the Thirteen Witches trilogy to a suspenseful climax, incorporating even more fantasy and science fiction elements—perhaps too many. While the language remains accessible, the abundance of fantastical elements and genre-hopping can feel excessive and over-complicate what could be a tighter story. That said, the book has real strengths. Rosie’s character development is nicely and believably constructed, building to a neat and satisfying conclusion. The supernatural elements, while plentiful, are thoroughly explained, and the characters feel realistic enough for kids to look up to. Most importantly, Rosie herself is a strong, opinionated, and compassionate hero that any reader would enthusiastically root for. 

Readers who enjoy magical space-travel, mysterious haunted hotels, and ragtag groups of heroes will love the fun banter, creative plot twists, and complex magic of The Palace of Dreams. The book is filled with supernatural creatures—from wicked, hive-minded crows to super-powered witch-hunters to ghosts—building toward a detailed and imaginative confrontation with the Nothing King, the last witch. 

Beyond the fantastical elements, Rosie demonstrates to young readers how to navigate the complexities of growing up while facing both internal struggles and external challenges. She’s a loyal friend with plenty of healthy relationships, embodying all the good qualities of a young hero. Ultimately, this is a highly original story with creative elements that come together to deliver a beautiful message: the only true way to defeat your demons is to trust yourself and your instincts, accepting yourself for who you are. Readers who want to get lost in another witchy fantasy should also read Curse of the Night Witch and The Okay Witch. 

Sexual Content  

• Over the course of their journey, Rosie realizes that she has feelings for her ghost friend, Ebb. The tension culminates when Ebb confronts Rosie about her weird behavior around him, and she confesses her feelings. They kiss. Rosie thinks, “For now, he lets go of my hand, and brushes a piece of hair out of my face like he’s being brave. And I don’t turn away, because I’m being brave too. And when we kiss—since we’re made of the same magical stuff that’s brought us this far in the first place—I feel it.” 

Violence  

• Rosie discovers her aunt Jade’s betrayal from the account of a ghost named Bo. Bo tells her that her aunt requested the Time Witch kill her father. Bo tells Rosie, “I’ll never forget what she said after that. She said she wanted the Time Witch to take away the very next person her sister had come to love after her. The Time Witch said she already knew who that would be. She said she knew of a sailor. She said she’d make it look like a sinking so that no one would ever suspect the truth—or their bargain.”
• As Rosie and her friends confront the Nothing King, they’re attacked by a swarm of crows. Rosie’s new pet bird, Flit, “becomes a cat and devours [a crow].” They escape the swarm, and no one is badly injured. 
• When the Nothing King kidnaps Rosie’s brother Wolf, Rosie’s new friend Rufus confronts the Nothing King. But “the Nothing King’s arm shoots like a vine toward him, and hits Rufus’s skull with bone-cracking force. Rufus falls with a sickening thud to the floor.” Rufus dies.  
• In another confrontation with the Nothing King, his pet crows eat most of Rosie’s ghost allies. “As they surround the ghosts, the crows dive in from all sides, pecking, devouring, smothering. And soon the ghosts are lost and buried in the sheer number of the birds, and we can’t see them or their crackling light at all. . . The ghosts are gone. Swallowed. Just like that.” 
• When Rosie finds Wolf and tries to save him from the Nothing King, Wolf has his own tricks up his sleeve. Using a magical net that he created, he traps the Nothing King. “Wolf is on the Nothing King’s back, his jagged weapon wrapped around the witch’s neck. He is flapping his crow-wing cloak and trying to drag the Nothing King backward [into a black hole]. He’s failing. The Nothing King is fighting him off, trying to shape-shift and pushing him away.” 

Drugs and Alcohol  

• None 

Language    

• None 

Supernatural  

• This series follows Rosie and her friends as they defeat witches to save the world. Naturally, this means that there are a fair number of supernatural elements. The Nothing King controls crows and creates black holes. Additionally, ghosts aid Rosie and her friends in fighting the Nothing King.  
• There is space and time travel, as well as cloud shepherds and the Brightweaver, who collect dreams and mend souls. They serve the Moon Goddess, who is more of a magical figure than a religious one.  
• Rosie, along with the other witch hunters, has special abilities that allow them to fight witches. For example, Rosie’s witch-hunting ability is the power to bring her stories to life. She often manifests a bird as her pet and friend that helps her fight witches. On the new planet, Rosie wakes one morning to find a new bird, since her old one passed away. The bird is “standing on the foot of the bed, blinking at [Rosie] with [the bird’s] head tilted to one side (either groggily or dizzily, [Rosie] can’t tell). . .  glowing, translucent, magical.” 
• The book opens following the conclusion of the previous installment, when the Nothing King was freed, and Rosie and her friends escape by traveling to a different planet. Rosie thinks to herself about “the war against the witches on the beach. The blanket made of nothing left behind. The black hole opening above the Earth. [Rosie and her friends] gaze at each other, in shock. Is it all gone? The sea? Our town? Countries? The world?” 
• After escaping Earth, Rosie’s new witch hunter friend Wanda explains, “The Nothing King’s been imprisoned in his own black hole, locked up there by the Moon Goddess for millennia, but now these twin black holes have been connected across the universe like a tunnel, so the Nothing King could come through it and drag Earth in. . . and obliterate it. If that hasn’t happened yet, I imagine it soon will.” 
• Confused and disoriented, the heroes explore their new planet, and they stumble upon a hotel staffed by ghosts. “Wanda taps her wooden leg and is lifting her finger to ring the bell again, when suddenly we hear a tut, tut, tut down one of the halls. It takes another moment, but eventually a shining ghost materializes through the wall behind the desk and comes to float his elbows just beside the bell. He has a goatee and round eyeglasses, over which he gazes at us in distaste. He busies his hands with his wrinkled bow tie.” 
• While trying to find the missing owner, Wanda and Rosie find a pair of socks in his old room, and Wanda suggests he might be hiding in them. She explains that, “Size and space and time and place don’t mean what you used to think. And neither do the boundaries between them.” She and Rosie decide that they need to go inside the sock to find him, but they fail to find him. 
• One of the hotel’s services is a shuttle to Limbo. Rosie’s ghost friend, Ebb, tells Rosie that Limbo is a haven for ghosts, but with a downside. Ebb says, “Well, once a ghost enters Limbo, they can never leave. Which means never moving Beyond.” 
• The hotel also has a magical vending machine that gives any guest whatever they want. When Rosie “find[s] one old penny at the bottom of a hole in [her] pocket, [one of the ghostly hotel staff] shrugs. ‘That’ll get you something, just nothing glamorous. Push the green button and it’ll show you your options.’” Rosie describes the machine: “Several rows of prizes turn in circles before my eyes, dotted with flashing lights like a casino. Everything is in miniature: bags of Doritos the size of my thumbnail, but also cars, thimbles, what looks to be a Jacuzzi, a tiny roller coaster, a castle. . .” 
• When Rosie and Wanda go inside the magic sock to find the hotel’s owner, they find themselves trapped in a memory in an old train station. A tornado attacks them, and they have to leave the sock. Rosie thinks, “A crashing, ripping sound surrounds me. Something flies across my vision and strikes my chest, and I scream, crumpling to the ground, trying to grasp what’s happening. Wanda appears a moment later, and she too is knocked off her feet and onto her back. We’re being battered—by wind, I realize. So strong that it pins us where we lie.” No one is harmed. 
• Eventually, Rosie has an idea of where to find the hotel owner. When she finds him, he reveals that he’s in hiding to keep a secret from the Nothing King. Before the Nothing King escaped, the Brightweaver gave the hotel owner, Rufus, the Museum of Imagined Things. “He nods and opens the lid. A glow comes from within, illuminating our faces as we peer into its depths. Within the hollow of the basket, mist swirls, sparkling and flashing, like lightning in a cloud. I look up at Rufus, squinting in confusion. ‘It’s the Museum of Imagined Things,’ he says, as if I should recognize it. ‘It’s a palace filled with all of the world’s dreams.’” Rosie “remember[s] the Museum of Imagined Things from that one and only time [she] visited the Brightweaver, a towering building made of clouds that reached so far into the sky, [she] couldn’t see the top of it.” The Brightweaver reshaped it into a basket before the Nothing King came, so it’s a smaller item to transport.  
• The book describes what the Earth is like under the Nothing King. “It’s been twenty-five days since the moon disappeared. In the moon’s absence, night animals roam daylit highways, winds rage through streets once untouched by storms, tornadoes rip up ancient woods. In waterfront towns and cities, the ocean is eating the shores, and people retreat inward. At first, they don’t see the invisible creatures that travel alongside them, iridescent hummingbirds and chameleons and peacocks. . . the familiars of eleven dead witches, returning gifts that once were stolen.” 
• As Rosie ventures inside the Museum of Imagined Things, she meets an old ghost friend, Homer. He explains how he and other ghosts got to the Museum. “Well, what ye’re seeing when that happens is a doorway, a thin place in the invisible fabric where real and unreal meet. By stepping into a certain painting, or a certain story, ye can reach the place its maker imagined.” He pauses. “Well, that is, if yer a ghost. Given what ghosts are made of, we’re the only ones that can. Of course, all those places are stored here, in this museum.” 
• Inside the Museum, there is a room full of mind maps, or maps of people’s minds. Rosie finds her long-lost aunt’s mind map and describes it, “most of it is too clustered, tangled, and minuscule to make out. But I do see that one particular place is dim and gray, with an etching of two little girls. The branching paths around them are scribbled out, as if something there is better left forgotten. Near one of the scribbles is a drawing of a crow.” 
• While in the Room of Mind Maps, Rosie meets a cloud shepherd. “A cloud shepherd is peering around at me from behind a shelf about fifteen feet away, holding his misty finger to his misty lips. He’s an elderly-looking blob of white fluff, pointed at the top like a dollop of whipped cream. He floats out from behind the shelf.” 
• When the Nothing King finds Rosie and her friends on their new planet, he launches an attack. Rosie describes him as a “man in a crow-feather cape that looks like it contains pure emptiness, a feather hood over a shadow where a face should be. He stands still for a moment, his blank face steady as it’s turned up toward us. And then he disintegrates into the ground and vanishes again.” 
• As they leave the new planet, running from the Nothing King, Germ hands Rosie her teddy bear. “After a moment, to please Germ, [Rosie] give[s] it a hug. When [she] do[es], it begins to glow. And the glow wraps all around [Rosie], making [her] go warm and soft. And [she] feel[s], suddenly, okay.” Germ’s witch-hunting ability is making others feel brave and safe.  
• In need of reinforcements, Rosie and her friends go to Limbo to recruit ghosts. When they get there, Homer meets them. “[Homer] winks at [Rosie], then takes a deep breath to concentrate. He raises his hands and, using the technique he’s clearly just learned from Ebb, uses them to push the mist back. . . and back. . . and back. As the clouds curl away from the dock, [Rosie sees] that Limbo’s not a lonely place at all, and [her] heart soars. Thousands of ghosts are gathered before [Rosie and her friends], hovering in a crowd and waiting.” 
• To save the world from the Nothing King, Rosie must become one with her witch-hunting power. Rosie “open[s] up [her] palms, and [her magical pet bird] slips inside [her] skin, lighting up [her] arms as [the bird] travels to [Rosie’s] heart. The boundaries between [them] fall, no line where [Rosie] end[s] and [her bird] begins. [Rosie] glow[s] with the strength of her [pet bird], and [the bird] stretches with the strength of [Rosie]. [Rosie] spread[s] [her] arms, and they are wings, not attached to a cape like Wolf’s but a part of [her]. [Rosie] stretch[es] [her] feet, and they are claws.” 
• To thank them for saving the world, the Moon Goddess appears in front of Rosie and Germ. “[The Moon Goddess’s] standing on [Rosie’s] lawn, as silver as the moon itself. [Rosie] open[s] [her] mouth and close[s] it again, too stunned to talk. The goddess keeps her distance, her face smooth and silver and expressionless, though not unkind. Her eyes are somehow soft and sharp at the same time, as if she sees everything at once, as if she has bigger things to think about than [Rosie and her friends]. As if the whole world, maybe the whole universe, is in her eyes all the time.” 

Spiritual Content  

• None 

by Kate Schuyler