Wednesday, May 8, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater



The Dream Thieves is the second book in Maggie Stiefvater "Raven Cycle", and the sequel to her YA urban fantasy novel, The Raven Boys (which I reviewed here).   As is not particularly unusual for novels that are the first in a series, that book was very much about setup, so I was expecting the Dream Thieves to have a lot more of substantive plot with the basics of the setup already done.  I'd rather liked the characters and world introduced in the first book, so I was hoping not to be disappointed here.

And for the most part I wasn't - The Dream Thieves takes The Raven Boys' setup and cliffhanger and builds a full satisfying plot upon it, focusing upon the one major protagonist who got the short-shaft in the last book: Roman Lynch, the "bad boy" of the quartet.  The book - and the series so far - isn't anything special, with some annoying points at times, but it's definitely well done, with some really interesting fantasy magic, moral choices by its characters, and surprising plot twists that made me happy I gave it another shot, and I will be continuing with the third book next month.

Note: I'm reading this whole series in audiobook format via my Hoopla Library.  The reader does some impressive accent work with the characters, making it very clear who is speaking at any given point, and it works without sounding too cartoonish.  Worth a listen in this format.  Still, if I misspell any of the names, it's since I'm not reading this in print.    

 More after the jump:

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
In Henrietta, Virginia, the Leyline has woken.  But what that means is unclear for Blue Sargent and the Raven Boys, their families, and all of Henrietta.  The Leyline's power is clear...but it isn't steady, sometimes being powerful enough to blow out transformers all over town, sometimes being non-existent.  And it's not at all clear what this all cost Adam - what he sacrificed and whether Adam will be the same.

In the middle of this is Ronan Lynch.  His secret ability to take objects and beings from his dreams and to make them reality is only growing, though the ability is hardly comfortable for him.  And his secret has become known to others, who are searching for the ability and want it badly enough to kill - not only Ronan, but his family and friends as well.

Why does Ronan Lynch have this power?  And how does it tie-in with the mystery of his dad's death, his forbidden home, and his sleeping mother? And who exactly is Ronan Lynch and who does he want to become?  That may be the greatest secret of all, and the process of discovering the answer may tear Henrietta apart.
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The Raven Boys essentially focused upon 4 of the 5 main characters - Blue Sargent and 3 of the 4 Raven Boys - Gansey and Adam (who both had POV chapters in addition to Blue) and Noah.  The fourth member of the group, Ronan, was sort of left to the side, simply established as the jerky bad boy of the group who was still suffering inside from the loss of his father.  The Dream Thieves shifts most of the focus to Ronan himself - Adam, Gansey, and Blue remain point of view characters, but Ronan probably gets the most screentime from his own new POV, and this really is his book.

And it works really well, because as he's developed in this book now (as opposed to the last book again, where he was more of a skeleton of a character), Ronan's really interesting.  The best way to describe him is of course - he's a mess.  Yeah he's an adrenaline junkie who likes to maintain a bad boy rep, despite what both Gansey and his brother would try and have of him, but he does have people and things he loves and would do anything to try and protect.  To the book's credit, Ronan isn't the "Jerk with a heart of gold" character either - he's still a jerk who feels the urge to do reckless dangerous activities even when he should know better, and almost certainly was so even before his father died, but he has some different sides as well to him.  It's a mess of contradictions, and it makes him rather interesting to read about and see how things work out, and I look forward of seeing more of Ronan in the remaining two books, something I wasn't expecting going in.

The other major POV addition is what at first seems to be this book's antagonist - "The Gray Man," a hitman hired to go to Henrietta to obtain the mythical "Gray Warren" - an object that can allow people to take things out of their dreams and put them into reality.  But whereas I first thought he was going to be a bit of a repeat of the first book's antagonist, he's a lot different in ways I won't spoil here - I'll simply say that he has his own traumas and interests and sort of a code, which makes chapters from his point of view always rather interesting up through the end.  It takes a while for him to directly interact with the boys, but his interactions with the rest of the cast are well done enough that it never feels slow as a result.

The rest of the characters are a bit more hit or miss.  Gansey alternates from interesting to kind of still douchie due to his rich obliviousness, and while the book still recognizes it and tries to compensate for it by having other characters call him out for it, it's starting to get annoying.  Blue works far better in general, although her attraction to Gansey I'm not sure really works (and yes we all know it's coming).  And Adam.....is probably the biggest issue with the book.  The book has him get angry and aggressive, almost as if he's becoming his father, at times here and it doesn't really work and just feels like a way to get him out of Blue's romantic path.  Like it's obviously attempting to do the "abused child" takes on some of the aspects of his abuser thing to go with Adam's determination to be self-supportive even among his richer friends, but I don't think it rather works.

Still, the plot in general works really well, some plot holes notwithstanding (it's an awful big coincidence that the events of this plot happen just now after they work the leyline rather than some point previously, which is something the book never tries to explain, but whatever) and the result is rather satisfying resolutions to this stage in Ronan and The Gray Man's lives.  The main plot arc of the series is kind of pushed to the side here, but what is in its place works rather well and I'm a lot happier with how this one works from start to finish that I was with its predecessor.  Overall, I'm enjoying the series and I'll probably be reading the next work in about 2 weeks. 

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