- Release Date: September 17th 2013
- Pages: 448 Pages
- Genre: Gothic/Magic Realism/Supernatural/ Paranormal ???
- Publisher: Scholastic
Synopsis: Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after...
The Dream Thieves has to be my most anticipated novel of 2013! I read The Raven Boys last year out of the blue and was blown away by Steifvater’s mix of charm, writing and character. This review will be spoiler-free for The Dream Thieves and relatively spoiler-free for The Raven Boys.
The focus of this story shifts slightly from the ladies of 300 Fox Way and Gansey to the trouble maker of the group, Ronan Lynch. Stiefvater does some amazing character work with Ronan as we learn more about his past. I liked getting a sense of his backstory and the relationship he has with his brothers. What I really like about Ronan is that while he is the quintessential angst-ridden YA bad boy he isn’t idolized for it, he is alienated by it.
As with any sequel we have a few new characters, but I think by far the most interesting one is Aligonby student Joseph Kavinsky. He is Henrietta’s resident forger who drives a Mitsubishi Evo with a knife painted on the outside (wink ,wink). While Kavinsky ends up adding a lot to the plot and has some amazing scenes, there were times when he came off as a little manic and cartoon-y.
Steifvater’s writing is absolutely wonderful, I love her use of an omnipresent third person. It allows the reader to be in so many places at once without having to change the flow of the story. Also, and maybe it was the character named The Gray Man, but the tone of this novel reminded me a lot of The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Something about it was so magical and whimsical.
The tone of the Dream Thieves is less Southern Gothic than The Raven Boys and more border line horror-thriller with a healthy does of Nightmare Fuel.Steifvater has a really large cast that keeps growing in this book and with each new person getting a plot, it can get overwhelming at times. It felt like the story was doing so much and when the resolution happened it felt like it came out of nowhere.
To quote Gansey, I continue to find The Raven Cycle “Astonishingly charming.” Once the story got rolling I couldn’t put it down until I figured out what happens next. Each book in this cycle opens me up to fascinating new kinds of magic. I have so many theories about the rest of this series and can’t wait for the next one to see how they all shake out.
* ARC received at Book Expo America.
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I’m a lifelong reader who started blogging about YA books in 2011 but now I read in just about every genre! I love YA coming of age stories, compelling memoirs and genre bending SFF. You can find me talking all things romance at Romance and Sensibility.