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The Dream Thieves - Maggie Stiefvater
Apr. 26th, 2019 02:51 pmIn the second installation of the Raven Cycle, the search for Glendower continues, two of the kids learn how to control their magic powers, and all of them try to deal with the fact they want to kiss each other, in various combinations, despite it being a bad idea, for various reasons, including kiss-related curses. There is also a hit man with a love of Anglo-Saxon poetry and – as he discovers soon after arriving in the small town of Henrietta, VA – Blue’s mom.
I thoroughly enjoyed it – especially since “disenchanted hit man falls in love with a local woman he met while on a nefarious assignment and decides to make an honest man of himself” is my new favorite trope – but The Raven Boys is still my favorite book in the series so far, mostly because I am somewhat less interested than Maggie Stiefvater is in a. flashy cars and b. Ronan Lynch.
I don’t dislike Ronan, but he’s not my favorite, either, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the storyline about his weird mind-game rivalry with Kavinsky. It just came across as edgy to the point of being slightly ridiculous. I guess independently traveling the world in search of a long-lost Welsh king is as unrealistic a teen pursuit as... *check notes* drugs, murder, explosives, and kidnapping, but I went in expecting to read about the first one so I wasn’t mentally prepared for the second.
I did like how ( spoilers. )
I’m also a fan of the way Stiefvater intersperses chapters from her antagonist’s POVs in between the ones focused on her main characters. Something I picked up on in the first book, and by the second one is a definite pattern, are the parallels she draws between her heroes and antagonists. In The Raven Boys, there’s the obvious parallel between Whelk’s teenaged search for Glendower and the gang’s, and a more specific one between Whelk and Adam. The climax of the novel directly positions them as foils through their different understanding of the sacrifice needed to wake the ley line— ( spoilers. ) There’s also a parallel to be drawn between Whelk’s resentment over the loss of his family’s fortune, and Adam’s envy of his classmates’ wealth and their easy, privileged lives.
In The Dream Thieves, brothers play a major role in both the Gray Man’s story and Ronan’s, but the more obvious parallel is between the Gray Man and Gansey: both are history nerds and seekers of magical artifacts; both of them fall in love with Henrietta as a place they could call home after years of traveling the world.
I thoroughly enjoyed it – especially since “disenchanted hit man falls in love with a local woman he met while on a nefarious assignment and decides to make an honest man of himself” is my new favorite trope – but The Raven Boys is still my favorite book in the series so far, mostly because I am somewhat less interested than Maggie Stiefvater is in a. flashy cars and b. Ronan Lynch.
I don’t dislike Ronan, but he’s not my favorite, either, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the storyline about his weird mind-game rivalry with Kavinsky. It just came across as edgy to the point of being slightly ridiculous. I guess independently traveling the world in search of a long-lost Welsh king is as unrealistic a teen pursuit as... *check notes* drugs, murder, explosives, and kidnapping, but I went in expecting to read about the first one so I wasn’t mentally prepared for the second.
I did like how ( spoilers. )
I’m also a fan of the way Stiefvater intersperses chapters from her antagonist’s POVs in between the ones focused on her main characters. Something I picked up on in the first book, and by the second one is a definite pattern, are the parallels she draws between her heroes and antagonists. In The Raven Boys, there’s the obvious parallel between Whelk’s teenaged search for Glendower and the gang’s, and a more specific one between Whelk and Adam. The climax of the novel directly positions them as foils through their different understanding of the sacrifice needed to wake the ley line— ( spoilers. ) There’s also a parallel to be drawn between Whelk’s resentment over the loss of his family’s fortune, and Adam’s envy of his classmates’ wealth and their easy, privileged lives.
In The Dream Thieves, brothers play a major role in both the Gray Man’s story and Ronan’s, but the more obvious parallel is between the Gray Man and Gansey: both are history nerds and seekers of magical artifacts; both of them fall in love with Henrietta as a place they could call home after years of traveling the world.
