BOOK REVIEW – The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater

The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2)
by Maggie Stiefvater
Purchase on: Amazon
Add to: Goodreads

Synopsis:

If you could steal things from dreams, what would you take?

Ronan Lynch has secrets. Some he keeps from others. Some he keeps from himself.

One secret: Ronan can bring things out of his dreams.

And sometimes he's not the only one who wants those things.

Ronan is one of the raven boys—a group of friends, practically brothers, searching for a dead king named Glendower, who they think is hidden somewhere in the hills by their elite private school, Aglionby Academy. The path to Glendower has long lived as an undercurrent beneath town. But now, like Ronan's secrets, it is beginning to rise to the surface—changing everything in its wake.

“Suddenly, for the briefest moment, panic forced itself up.
Am I a dream creature? Would I know?“

► No one is more flabbergasted than me to realize – to confirm – that Ronan Lynch is undoubtedly my favorite.

RONAN. FREAKING. LYNCH.

Ronan, who’s so keen on showing the kind of thrill-seeking, self-destructive behavior I would usually hate and manages to make me love him nonetheless. Tell me, is there something more powerful than the annihilation of a usual revulsion? I don’t think there is.

He’s so freaking stupid at times. Unable to fucking communicate. It would be so, so easy for me to despise him and hate him a little. Except I don’t, I cannot. I’m way too busy caring for him.

“Ronan watched Gansey over the body of the creature – it seemed even larger in its death – and his expression was as unguarded as Gansey had ever seen it. He was being made to understand that this, all of it, was a confession. A look into who Ronan really had been the entire time he had known him.
What a world of wonders and horrors, and Glendower only one of them.”

Perhaps I should try and explain why – how – he can avoid my ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME radars… It has to be something, right? It has to be some quality I can quantify? Should I wait for some fucking epiphany about why I’m not growling and facepalming and rolling my eyes?

You wish.

There’s only Chainsaw and a baby mouse and longing. There’s only brotherhood and family and hurt and hurt and hurt. Loneliness and anger and that dazzling smile that escapes, escapes, escapes.

There’s also “I’m being perfectly fucking civil” , because come on now.

I know you smiled too.

“And you, Ronan,” Niall said. He always said Ronan differently from other words. As if he had meant to say another word entirely – something like knife or poison or revenge – and then swapped it out for Ronan’s name at the last moment.
“When you were born, the rivers dried up and the cattle in Rockingham County wept blood.”

If this reread taught me something, it’s that above the mysteries – no matter how intriguing they are – Maggie Stiefvater‘s novels are always so very character-driven. It can be seen as a flaw, or it can be your undoing. Me, though? I love these Raven Boys to pieces – they’re real to me. Yet it’s funny how perception can change over the time, really. Indeed it seems that Adam and Blue switched roles during this second read : the first used to annoy me, and I liked the latter. Now it’s the opposite, but I don’t care, it doesn’t change anything because in the end, above the characters, what’s important here are the dynamics and the relationships between them all. Who cares about specifics?

“Ronan Lynch’s second secret was…”

Oh, yes. That. Strangely, I’m feeling more invested in that ship now. Go figure.

Also – so much foreshadowing : we can say many things about the plot – messy, slow, confusing – yet under the chaos hides order. There are so many tiny clues that I didn’t catch the first time, SO. MANY. How’s that for brilliant, I wonder.

I am not ready for this series to end.

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