The Dream Thieves

Book Title: The Dream Thieves

Author: Maggie Stiefvater

Series: The Raven Quartet #2
Date Started: April 29th 2015

Date Completed: May 7th 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

I'm actually quite upset by how this book turned out: I'm really really disappointed. There's quite a few things I had problems with, the biggest being the fact that part of the brilliance of the first book was that it was a story in its own right, but it was clearly a part of a much larger story. But where was any sort of sustained story in The Dream Thieves? At the moment, my disappoint isn't willing to let it go as 'second book syndrome'.

Like I said in my review of The Raven Boys, there isn't that much that jumps out at me as wonderful from Stiefvater's writing (barring imagery, but I'll get to why that doesn't apply so much here in a moment). While she has a nice flow and perfectly adequate writing ability, the dialogue doesn't grab me within seconds of reading and I do find some parts unnecessary.

I also still don't quite understand the mechanics of the magic: while I can see that this was quite a nice technique in the first book for drawing us in, as more and more of it is being included I feel like I should be able to realise how it works - but I'm not. Whether that's me not picking up well enough or whether it's not explained, it's something I found quite irritating as I was reading this book.

But it's the imagery that's sticking out. Stiefvater's descriptions of scenery in particular have this beautiful way of appearing in your head in the most vibrant and vivid ways. But for some reason, there were very few interesting locations involved in this story - quite strange considering one of the character's spends most of their time in dreams.

I wouldn't call The Dream Thieves a filler book, but it doesn't carry on the story from the second book's story and it doesn't seem to develop much to get the characters to a point where something new can happen. I'm just not sure what happened to the plot of this novel: it didn't add to the series' quest and it didn't seem to have its own individual story.

What it did have was a ton of side stories. Now don't get me wrong, I love reading little smaller plots that weave in or add something to the overall story - but I don't get what the main story of The Dream Thieves was supposed to be. It felt like a string of minor chapters with an event popping up every now and then that didn't really connect together, and it ended up having too much going on to work out what the main point was.

Neglecting the group as a whole was a big mistake in my opinion. There are very few scenes where the bunch of them are together and those are, personally, the best scenes by far. So much of the appeal of these books for me come from the way they bounce off and interact with each other. They haven't fallen out or anything, so why aren't they being used together and being awesome?

The ending scenes were good. Again, I wasn't blown away but I wasn't given reason to rant at all. However, the cliffhanger we're left with in the epilogue literally came out of nowhere. No hints suggesting something was off, no signs of danger in that context at earlier points. And because it came so out of the blue I can't say that I really care about it.

I adored (most of) these characters going into the book, and it started off great with things just like usual. Then, for no reason that I picked up on (admittedly I have been preoccupied), things started to fall apart.

Blue, apparently the main character, wasn't really...there. Yes, that's an exaggeration. But Blue was seemingly hovering around without actually impacting much. To be honest I much prefer reading about the boys anyway, but since the main storyline is supposed to revolve around her, it was puzzling to find that her only real involvement in the plot was to go out a few times and make some sarky comments.

Gansey is clearly more favoured by the writer - that's not necessarily a criticism, but he definitely has more of a presence in the overall plot lines and the side stories. Having said that, I'm still trying to work out what his own narrative is. For me, Gansey was Gansey from the first book: I liked him, but I wasn't overwhelmed.

Now Ronan was my favourite character from The Raven Boys, and when the story started to follow him more closely I was really excited. But unfortunately he just seemed to lose a lot of his attitude and drive: I can understand it from the events, but Ronan was in the same position in the first book, and just because we're only now being shown it doesn't mean he'd suddenly change his tune about it. I also think Ronan is a character that works a lot better around others, rather than by themselves.

Again I got a bit tired of Adam, and his involvement didn't really stand out to me. Of course, the large revelation towards the end of the book is quite impactful, but I don't understand where it came from - I have the feeling it was put in just to give him some sort of significance to the story.

Like The Raven Boys, I found this book hard to read continuously or in little chunks and keep up the pace and flow of the story. Last time I seem to remember reading in chunks of about fifty-sixty pages, but I could barely get past ten pages here. While I have nothing against slower plot lines, I felt a lot of chapters dragged; especially when you have a three page chapter followed by a ten page one.

I'm just really disappointed honestly. While I don't want to make it seem like this book was terrible - it wasn't - it was far from what my hopes had been raised to after the first book. Though I can see some people perhaps liking it more; we definitely go more into the realms of YA contemporary with some crazy urban fantasy thrown in. I'm aware that I'm feeling slightly biased after finishing the book less than half an hour ago, but nevertheless, the disappointment definitely crushed my enjoyment of The Dream Thieves.

Image Source - http://images.scholastic.co.uk/assets/a/74/81/149030-ml-1070783.jpg