Review--The Rule of Mirrors by Caragh M. O'Brien

At the remote, exclusive Chimera Centre, families of coma patients come from all over the world seeking miracles. When Althea Flores wakes up from a six-month coma, her recovery defies the limits of hope and science—except she can’t remember anything about her own life. Instead, she has all the memories of Rosie Sinclair, the missing Forge Show star, and she’s pregnant.

Far from the Chimera Centre, in a secret vault, the sleeping body of Rosie Sinclair is captive to the doctors who mine her dreams. Heavily sedated, Rosie struggles to awaken and manipulate her keeper for a chance to escape. She knows what she’ll do once she’s free—wreak vengeance on Dean Berg, the man who stole her dreams and turned her life into a nightmare.

Told in alternating points of view between the girl who has Rosie’s consciousness in a new, pregnant body, and the girl whose shattered subconscious rules Rosie’s old body, the second installment of The Vault of Dreamers trilogy is an intricate, psychologically thrilling novel about layers of identity, what lies in the mirror, and the link between body and soul.

Diving back into a series is hard, especially when it’s been years since you’ve read the first book. Such was the case for me with The Rule of Mirrors, Caragh M. O’Brien’s second installment in The Vault of Dreamers trilogy. Though I couldn’t remember much about the series since there were no recaps available, I re-read my review and was able to get a simplistic idea of what had already happened. There was momentary bites of recaps within the story as well, though I couldn’t recall much, I was able to follow along fairly well with this story, yet there were still plenty of confusing moments, because sci-fi.

Rosie is being kept in a coma, hidden in a lab somewhere while Berg mines her dreams. She’s able to wake up sporadically thanks to a young tech in the lab who’s become smitten with her. It’s almost a creepy relationship developing but as we are in Rosie’s mind, it’s clear that she’s using him so she can try to break free.

Then the point of view changes within the next chapter and we are introduced to a new character named Althea. This is where things get a tad confusing since we are in her first person point of view, and she’s not really Althea, she’s Rosie. Rosie’s mind is somehow inside Althea. She has Rosie’s memories and virtually nothing of the girl called Althea. Althea has just awakened from a coma and to top it all off, she’s pregnant!

Soon the story gets told back and forth between Rosie and Althea. It was rather strange too, because for all intents and purposes Althea is a version of Rosie, yet the real Rosie is still out there. As Althea’s family tries to convince her of her identity and memories, she can’t help but want to get back to her Rosie life and help her friends and family.

It should be no surprise that Rosie eventually breaks free and is on the run and hiding. She doesn’t know where her friends are and finding people to trust is equally hard to find as well. But one thing she is sure about, Berg has to die!

This book was kind of insane! First off, I don’t recommend doing what I did, read the book as an ARC in early 2014 and then in late 2017 return to the finished series unless there’s time for a re-read! A series binge would be recommended because I will honestly say I was confused for quite a bit in trying to remember all what was happening in the first book. Then you add in that this takes place in the future and there’s all sorts of science and technology involved that just makes it a bit hard to get through at times. Like the “mining” of dreams. I can’t quite remember what that meant and though we get some explanation through example, it was still a bit offsetting.

And now I remember what I thought about the romance situation! And let’s face it, that love triangle that I thought wasn’t going to happen, yeah, that was wrong! Burnham gets involved again to help Rosie our and of course there’s Linus around too! So things are kind of messy in that area. I felt like things with Linus was a sure thing, not so much anymore!

I don’t want this review to come off as a warning against this series! I still find myself enjoying it despite bouts of confusion and memory issues. There’s still a very intriguing story happening here with plots of conspiracy, secret experiments, and a possible revenge plot going on as well. And the ending was yet another total shocker that will throw you through the loop! I am eager to see how things will be resolved with all that was going on!

The Rule of Mirrors is part chaos, part intrigue and still managed to keep me engaged with everything it has to offer! This is definitely a series that is meant to be binged properly and not read sporadically like I did it! If you love a good sci-fi read filled with a deeply seeded plot, then this is the read for you!


Overall Rating 3.75/5 stars—yup an awkward rating because while I did have some initial struggles, I still found myself totally into the story and was eager to see what would happen!