The most significant motif in the novel are dreams, which take different forms in the novel. Dreams are established as a significant motif in Chapter 1, with Lazlo’s vivid imagination and fantasies of Weep, and in Chapter 2 when the reader learns Lazlo’s eponymous nickname for the first time: Strange the Dreamer. Dreams are the primary motif associated with Lazlo, and they inform his greatest strengths—hope, optimism, faith, and knowledge of magic—in the novel.

When Sarai is introduced in Part 2, she is framed as a foil to Lazlo. Her primary motif contrasts Lazlo’s, for while he is just a dreamer, she is the Muse of Nightmares. Through the motif of nightmares in Sarai’s character arc, Laini Taylor explores the complex nature of good and evil. While dreams are a positive force in relation to Lazlo, in relation to Sarai they become weapons of destruction. Taylor uses the nightmare motif to suggest that there are two sides to every coin; just as nightmares and dreams are made from the same cloth, lines between good and evil are not so clearly defined.

In Part 3, dreams and nightmares intertwine when Sarai enters Lazlo’s dream of Weep.