School of Light — Jody Lynn Nye

PERFECTION IS A DANGEROUS ILLUSION

Where does your mind go when you fall asleep.

To the Dreamland, where seven Sleepers dream the ever-changing landscape drawn by trillions of sleeping minds from the Waking World. Where form follows function, so a hovel today may be a castle or a cave tomorrow. Where the people battle nightmares with only the strength of their will and sanity.

Juele is the youngest and most promising new student to enter the strange new world of the School of Light. At this legendary institution, she will learn how to master illusion, the highest form of art in the Dreamland. Her talent has excited the interest of many of the senior students, the professors, but most important of all, the Idealists. They are the elite of the Illusionists, a tightly knit group of talents who admit Juele to their mysterious circle in the Ivory Tower.

Her mentor, an Idealist named Rutaro, has embarked upon a project to surround the Castle of Dreams with an image of perfection, in which Juele will play a key role. But other students who are jealous of Juele's good fortune set out to pervert Rutaro's design. What they have in mind bears no resemblance to reality. The worst part is that no one, not Rutaro, nor the King, the ministers, or even Roan, the King's Investigator, seems to notice that the government of the Dreamland is plunging into deadly chaos. Juele is faced with having to find the reality within the fantasy with the only skill she has at hand: illusion.