Hello everyone! Welcome to a new week, a new Monday and a few new entries of
Mark This Book Monday!
For the first of them a quite long and quite rambling review of a fantastic second book in a series, that was also part of my
September is for Sequels Challenge!
The Dream Thieves by
Maggie StiefvaterMy rating:
5 of 5 starsI was ecstatic when my copy of The Dream Thieves arrived in the mail just one day after release day, so I started reading it as soon as it opened the parcel!
The Dream Thieves has been another of those eagerly awaited books that has not only exceeded expentantions but completely blown me away! I loved the Raven Boys and fell in love with the characters and the story and their search and the writing and the pacing... and now with The Dream Thieves, the impossible has happened and I'm even more in love with the whole world and characters!
For some reason I took my time reading this book, not only cause of life and work getting in the way of my reading time, but also cause I tried my best not to rush through the book! There are so many details, so many things you might miss! So I did my best to slow my reading, even with taking little breaks after a few pages to let all that I had read settle in and give it a few swirls in my head.
I'm gonna try to keep this review as spoiler free as possible, even more cause this book deserves to be enjoyed with all its twists and surprises intact!
This book could be said that it is Ronan's book, cause we really get to know so much more about him, about his past, his family and we get to understand him and ,in my case at least, love him and root for him in a way that I didn't think possible in Raven Boys. In book 1 I appreciated his loyalty to his friends, but really didn't understand his self deprecating and self destructive tendencies. Well, dear Ronan, the poor guy has so much on his shoulders, and half of it he doesn't even know what to think or do about it! He's not just a bit of a hero in this book beyond his unexplainable ability to talk to the trees in Cabeswater but he does learn some lessons about his heritage and even more important ones about himself.
Quite a bit of the focus is also given to Adam, his own conflicts with accepting himself and learning what the sacrifice he made to wake the ley line will really ask of it, but also of the way he deals with Gansey and Blue and how he seems to be too wrapped up on his own world of Adam proving his worth doing things the Adam way. He managed to get on my nerves a pair of times cause he simply seems to reject all help out of a misplaced sense or need of self validation, but there was a part of a conversation between Blue and Gansey that made me understand Adam a bit better, and I got to feel for him again so much in the final part of the book.
Gansey and his quest aren't so much in the forefront in this book, but that doesn't mean that his character doesn't continue to grow and have a lot of presence in the story. Gansey really is one, if not my absolutely favourite characters in the book. He's so complex with the many faces of him, his loyalty, his kindness and his naivete in some aspects. His search is still going, but there are very few new clues and very many new obstacles!
Blue and her family also get quite a development, we learn more about all the different pyschic females of the family, there's more Calla, there's more Penelope and there's more Orla, and one way or another all of them contribute greatly in their own little ways to the story. Maura also gets to be quite a bit more than just the pyschic mother of Blue.
Noah is still his own ghostly self, no more back story or any intriguing bit reveals about it, he's there as a good friend to the boys and to Blue.
And Blue, well if I had to pick a fave character, she'd be it! I love how she's trying to figure out herself, trying to be supportive of her friends, trying to understand all the boys even if sometimes Ronan acts like deserving of a good slap and even when Adam isn't helping his case at all... she's always being strong and proving everyone and herself that Blue is awesome being herself! She cares for the boys, she loves her strange family and she is managing to quite succesfully mixing both.
There are quite a few new characters, some more important than others, some that were in the background of Raven Boys and came front stage in this one. A new and rather disturbing character is the Gray Man. He describes himself as a hit man and it's looking for a rather mystic "object" on the orders of a collector. Every mention of the Gray Man made me think of the legends of the Green Man, and how his no use of his name or how unnoticeable he tries to keep himself, he seems to be taking a name that represents a character that has been represented by other people at other times. I don't know if that hunch will prove correct in book 3, or it'll be just an odd idea I had. He first comes trying to do his job, but as he learns more about what he's looking for he becomes more embroiled in the whole plot and more involved with our Raven boys and the Pyshic ladies.
The writing is fantastic, the plot is brilliant and keeps you on your toes with the twist and turns and all the little bits of information you keep on gathering. Character development is great and the way the relationships betweent the characters is fantastic. The romance doesn't have a big up front place in this book, but it is there, the progress or lack of progress of it, and it is still a bit of a motivatior for actions or lack of them. And that ending, damn! Why did it have to end with such an absolutely unexpected cliffhanger as that one!?
Really brilliant book, very much well deserve 5 (and even more) stars! Now forgive me while I go hug my copy of the book while rocking back and forth waiting for the next one!
View all my reviews
