To escape a tedious life working as a convenience store clerk and caring for his mentally ill mother, Roland Pritchard dreams. Every night he dreams of a magical realm called Meredin. In that world, Roland is a scholar of Meredin's ancient history, toiling away at a monastic life in an isolated abbey. His one escape from this dreary existence? Every night the young acolyte Roland dreams of a fantastic and strange world called Earth.And so it goes, night after night, dream after dream, until Roland's estranged cousins discover him. They reveal the truth: that Earth and Meredin are equally real, that Roland is a member of the royal Dreaming Families, and that his life in both worlds is in peril.Traveling between realms, Roland must dodge assassins and stop a secret war that threatens the two worlds. To do so he must master his latent magical talent, a strange sorcery that combines pairs of opposites (fire and water, earth and water, or in Roland's case, life and death) to produce potent dreaming magics.Pawn's Dream is set in the same universe as several of Nylund's other novels: Dry Water, Mortal Coils, All That Lives Must Die, and The Enchanted Knot.