The Dream Thieves review

The Dream Thieves
Maggie Stiefvater
18th September 2013
Scholastic UK

The second installment in the all-new series from the masterful, #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!

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…

I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I may have a new favourite Maggie Stiefvater book. The Dream Thieves was just brilliant. Usually I find that second books are not always as good as the first, but The Dream Thieves was, in my opinion, better than The Raven Boys. And I think that the next two books (I think it's a quartet?) will just keep on getting better. I really love these books, and I really love Maggie Stiefvater. I think she's probably one of the best YA writers out there, and all of her books are wonderfully different, both from each other, and from what else is out there. I hope she carries on writing books FOREVER. 

As many people have already said, The Dream Thieves is definitely Ronan's book. There's lots about the search for Glendower and all the other characters, too, but a lot of the focus was on Ronan and his ability. Lucky for me, Ronan is one of my favourite characters, which may be why I liked this book so much. (Though really they're all my favourites. Apart from Adam, maybe. Like, I like Adam and he's a really interesting character, but I don't care about him in the same way that I care about the others. Which is probably really bad considering his background and stuff. I'm going to stop now.) So yeah, I really liked reading about Ronan and finding out more about his family, and finally getting to meet his other brother Matthew, who is adorable, and who even Ronan loves. And I'm really looking forward to seeing how all this has changed him in the next book ('all this' meaning everything that happened in this book), and finding out a little bit more about him, because some things were implied at the end and I want to know if my speculations are right or not.

One of my other favourite things about The Dream Thieves was probably the two new characters - Kavinsky and the Gray Man. Kavinsky was a huge dick, and on the one hand I really didn't like him, but on the other hand he was a lot of fun and was pretty central to most of the stuff that happened with Ronan. Kavinsky is another Aglionby student, by the way. And the Gray Man is a hit man who has a thing with Blue's mother, Maura, and it was kind of sweet, despite the fact that he's kind of scary? I really like him though. I hope he sticks around for a while.

Probably my favourite, favourite things about these books, though, apart from the characters, is the fact that it doesn't feel like any other book or series that I've read, and I really love the fact that it's a great melding of Celtic history and modern America. And let me tell you you don't really get that many YA books about Celtic history, especially written by Americans, so The Raven Boys series is a treasure in that respect. And it's just such a good book, in, like, all respects. The Dream Thieves is beautifully written, like all of Maggie's other books, it's really tightly plotted, and even though the pacing is slow, it's a good kind of slow. The Dream Thieves is not all about the action. It's a bit about the action, but mostly it's just weaving its way through many different plotlines and characters and fitting them all together and making them work and then having a masterfully cruel ending which leaves you wanting to hibernate until the next book comes out. Usually, I sort of forget about a series a few days after reading a book in it, even if it has got a cliffhanger ending, but I only read The Raven Boys in June and even the wait from them until now has been pretty horrible. I JUST WANT THE ANSWERSSSS.

Also I really want one of the books to be about Blue predominantly. I know the first book was kind of about her, but I feel like the first book was half setting up the story and all the characters, and half Adam's book because of all the major events that happened to him and affected his life in it. But Blue is, like, my favourite, so that may be why. And her family. I'm pretty sure that Maggie could just write a whole book that was just Blue and her family bantering and generally being psychic and we would all read it and love it. I don't know how she's managed to make me so attached to so many characters in only two books, but I can't bear the thought of anything bad happening to any of them, ever. Even Noah, even though he's technically already dead. But I'm pretty sure that with a cast of characters this big, one of them is going to die. Probably. (Please don't let me be right).

Anyway. The Dream Thieves was brilliant. Maggie is brilliant. This whole series is brilliant. I really can't recommend them enough. Seriously, if I had to recommend a series to a person who was stalwart against reading YA, it would probably be this one. I don't know why. They're just SO GOOOD.