The Dream ThievesMaggie Stiefvater
Scholastic 2013
In Henrietta, everything is
opportunity, magic and myth. The ley line
has been woken, Cabeswater has taken its frightening yet wondrous sacrifice and
dreams perch on the shoulders of boys.
Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam and Noah stand on the brink of discovery, the
sleeping king, Glendower seeming tangibly close. Yet Henrietta crackles with
menace. Shadowy figures and frightening forces press ever closer while demons
of a more personal nature stalk the minds of those vital to their
containment. In this second instalment
of Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle,
ancient forces converge, friendships are tested and fate brings the full force
of its terrible, wonderful power down on the Raven Boys.
The
Dream Thieves is a triumph of characterisation. In The Raven Boys, Blue’s eyes were the prisms through which we were
introduced to Henrietta and Aglionby.
Here, Stiefvater moves through multiple viewpoints – an astonishing
amount, in all honesty, yet the story never loses cohesiveness. If anyone drives The Dream Thieves, however, then it’s Ronan Lynch. Ronan is an oxymoronic mix of loyalty and
loathing, pissiness and piety. He’s
wreathed in secrets that are both wondrous and terrifying, yet he himself is
fearless and almost blindly accepting talents. He is an incredibly intricate,
cleverly drawn character who rather owns this instalment of Stiefvater’s story. Contrasting Ronan, is new character
Levinsky. Levinsky is a psychopathic, foul-mouthed
creation of carefully orchestrated fecklessness and cruelty. He is what Ronan would be without the
inhabitants of Monmouth Manufacturing: a dark mirror on Ronan’s reality. Their interactions also suggest more hidden
aspects of the story, coming across like an illicit affair, thrilling but
ultimately sordid and with one always wanting more than the other.
While Ronan is accepting of recent
events, Adam is not. He’s losing time to
visions that he doesn’t understand and is terrified. For almost the entirety of
The Dream Thieves he fights to hold
onto the identity of Adam Parrish but flounders awfully, lashing out where he
should be asking for help. His
overwhelming self-pity and pride could be irritating but In Stiefvater’s hands
becomes a tragic hubris, almost noble in its very destructiveness. Anyway, it’s hard to be irritated at someone
who is so desperately lonely and sad. Of all Adam’s moments in the book it is
those he shares with Blue that hit home hardest in terms of his
loneliness. This is not lost on Blue but
she is realising that she could quite safely kiss Adam and this realisation
leads, in turn, to one that has been inevitable since the opening scenes of The Raven Boys. Blue remains slightly in
the background of The Dream Thieves
but is still at the heart of the group of characters, drawing together the
boys, the women and the energy.
Blue’s inevitability (and not only
hers) stems from her friendship with Gansey, who remains as fascinating here as
he ever was in The Raven Boys. Stiefvater cleverly allows readers to see a
Gansey who is, while still enigmatic and driven, very much a teenage boy with a
beloved car, the impulse to throw caution to the wind and girl troubles. Except even as a teenage boy with a beloved
car and girl troubles he is one part seventeen-year-old rich kid and ten parts
seemingly timeless wonder. An old soul,
perhaps, or maybe someone who’s lived through more time than anyone yet
realises.
Alongside this core group, there
are many others who become indelible parts of the ongoing story. Noah, the living dead boy, is far more
present than before and demonstrates an unquestioning innocence and lust for
life that seems strange in someone who suffered such a violent death. More than anything he delights in his
friendships and is particularly lovely with Blue, just when she needs it. The women of Fox Way are also very present in
this book and, unusually for a YA title, are allowed to emerge without the
presence of Blue or the boys. They do
this largely in the company of the mysterious Mr Gray, a character who it is
best for readers to discover themselves.
Above all, Stiefvater’s characters contain not a stereotype among
them. They are utterly unique –
something that is seen less often that one might think.
So often, the second book in a
series is the equivalent of “that difficult second album” but not so
Stiefvater’s tour de force. The multiple viewpoints and shifts in focus hang
together to create a story that is utterly mesmerising and full of moments that
are beautiful because they are sad and sad because they are beautiful. The
darker moments, which include some rather well written horror, are contrasted with
moments of utter glee, humour and the kind of knowingly glorious potential that
can surely only be felt by watching dreams fly with dreams. Yet the menace is there, surrounding the
story as surely as her characters are surrounded by Mitsubishi shark teeth.
The Dream Thieves is storytelling at its
best. The kind of storytelling that
makes you reflect on how much better the world is for having stories in
it. The characters are unique yet
ancient, the story new yet timeless. King
Arthur is referenced more than once in The
Dream Thieves, allowing this reader to spend many happy hours wondering who
might Merlin, or Lancelot, or Morgana turn out to be but also leading me to
turn to other great tales. TH White’s The Once and Future King and The Dark Is Rising Sequence by Susan
Cooper among others. Read them, read The
Dream Thieves and then be glad because this story has yet to be finished and that
there is surely yet more magic and yet more wonder to come from a writer at the
top of her game.
This review was brought to you by Splendibird. The Dream Thieves is available now. Thank you to lovely Nicole, who posted a copy across the Atlantic. You rock. Also, we'd like to recommend the audio recordings of both The Raven Boys and The Dream Thieves - Will Patton has a voice like syrup.
Comments
*swoon*