Doctor Strange: The Fate of Dreams

By: Devin Grayson, Marvel

Narrated by: Richard Rohan

Length: 6 hrs and 56 mins

Publisher's summary

Doctor Stephen Strange, the Sorcerer Supreme, has defeated demonic hordes, battled evil wizards, and tirelessly defended our realm against invading interdimensional armies. But when a dangerous dream begins inspiring normal people to act out their darkest ambitions, even Doctor Strange is pushed to his very limits.

Working alongside his longtime nemesis, Nightmare, the Sorcerer Supreme must delve into the nightmares, delusions, and desires of an entire planet. To save the Dream Realms, he'll have to give up some illusions of his own - including his heroism. In the fallout, what dreams will haunt the Sorcerer Supreme?

GraphicAudio® Production.

©2019 Marvel (P)2019 Marvel

Good Audiobook

Loved it. Loved all the characters. The story build up was well done. If you read Dr. Strange comics, you'll love this.

Attention grabber

Amazing how all the twists and turns come together. Entertaining and exciting and a great performance from each character.

Good, but flawed

The author is a fan of Dr Strange, and probably a long time fan, which is better than I can say of some of the recent comic book authors. He gets a lot of motivation for Dr Strange right on the nose. Those insights are the best parts of the book. The story is pretty good, and mostly flows well. And Wong is done right. Again, much better than I can say for some of the comic's authors. The very ending pages fall flat, and don't fit Dr Strange's personality well. I know the author is trying to make a point about sacrifice, and close the loop on the story arc, but it still didn't sit well as being in linenwith Dr Strange's personality. There were also some entirely unnecessary and drawn out elements in the realm of erotic dreams that entirely changed the book's pace and bogged the story down until they got out of the realm. And I must admit, I never felt invested in the two new characters. While Dr Strange and his motivations were fleshed out well, the new characters were kind of hollow, and I didn't care much what happened to them. But all in all, it was enjoyable, and the performances were good.

Loved the Format, Liked the Story

Overall, the voice actors’ performances saved this book. The story is fine, it was just unremarkable- nothing to grasp my attention for long periods of time.

The ambient sound effects also added to the experience in a positive way. This was my first audiobook with voice actors for each character and dedicated sound effects; this was a cool format and it’s encouraged me to find more like it.

Regarding the characters, it’s tough to care for anyone other than Doctor Strange and Nightmare. Not taking away from the voice actors’ talent, the other characters weren’t really interesting, in my opinion.

Overall, not a bad book and I’d say it’s worth a read/listen.

Great story, great cast

I’ve been a fan of the MCU for a long time, and tried a few audiobooks out to see if any would be as good as the movies. This one was very good in my opinion, thanks to a great cast to bring the story to life.

Fits Right In

Honestly it fits right into the comics I could even imagine where chronologically speaking. The only issue I had was not that Dr. Strange is a flawed human being but how he's flawed if that makes sense. In the comics and here too he's kinda a womanizer and I always hated that subplot. It was just used in the comics to show when he sunk low. So every now-and-again he'd lose something or get depress then wake up with a woman or two and I thought it was contrive nonsense. So that's my only issue. It's a small one. Doesn't hurt the overall story.

Things get Strange

Swap out dreams for the multiverse and the story has a lot of similarities to Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness. In my opinion though Fate of dreams is a better version of the two.

Overall, an Enjoyable Listen

First - before I get into the real review - One of the very first scenes in this audio drama features a mall shooting. The sounds of automatic gunfire and people screaming are prevalent as background noise. I thought this might be something some people should be aware of in advance, instead of being taken by surprise like I was.

Now, on to the review. This is my first foray into Marvel’s Graphic Audio line, and I came away with slightly mixed feelings. Overall, I enjoyed it, hence the high ratings. I’ve tried other books that were more like audio dramas with mixed results. This one probably falls somewhere in the middle of all those. The voice actors did an amazing job, in fact, I often found myself wishing there weren’t any other sounds besides their voices because they did SUCH a good job carrying the story. I only had one minor complaint with a few pronunciations - different actors would pronounce the same words in different ways - such as Agamotto, for example - and that pulled me out of the story a few times.

The plot was a fun, interesting look into the world of Stephen Strange - something I’d only been familiar with through the movies before now. I enjoyed seeing how the comics contrasted to the films, and would definitely listen to another Doctor Strange book like this one if Marvel decided to do any more.

My only major complaint comes from the background sounds employed for this book. Far too often they were either entirely unnecessary or much too loud. Specifically, the footsteps. There are sections of the book where important conversations are taking place while several characters walk from one point to another, and the sounds of their footsteps overpowered their conversations. It was more than a little distracting. There was also at least one point where the background music actually drowned out the actors who were speaking, and it didn’t seem to be intentional. In addition, there were several locations in the story where there was a constant mechanical hum/buzz in the background - like at the police station - which actually started to give me a headache. At first I thought it was an audio error, and got worried I’d have to return the book. But when the sound vanished after Strange left the location, I realized it was meant to be ambiance.

While the sound issues were definitely an unfortunate distraction, I still enjoyed the book overall, and will probably listen to it again at some point. For me, the interesting story and excellent voice actors made up for it, turning everything else into minor annoyances in an otherwise enjoyable listen.

I've been missing out

I grew up on Batman and X-Men comics and never really got into Avengers et al. until many years later when the MCU started. Is this what Dr. Strange was always like? I missed out! His stories are delightfully creepy.

What was I thinking?

I've never been a fan of the good doctor, but, like Doom, I like to keep an open mind to possibilities. This story really spoke to me on that level. It was weird to see Dr. Strange as side character to Jane in a Dr. Strange book. This type of storytelling kept me engaged and connected with Jane so strongly.

I highly recommend this book for anyone needing to escape normalcy, with a taste of fever dream, while still awake.