Review: The Dream Thieves

Title: The Dream Thieves
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Release Date: September 17, 2013
Format: eGalley

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…—via Goodreads

Last year I read The Raven Boys, the first book in this series by Maggie Stiefvater, and loved it so much that I didn’t know how to review it.

Which is a pretty serious thing for me, the girl with words for everything.

But I’m going to try with this one and give you a brief rundown of the story.

Basically, there’s an all-boys boarding school in a small North Carolina town that has a mystical ley line running through it. The boys that attend the school are called Raven Boys by the locals and one of these boys is Richard Gansey III, a guy who is charismatic and charming and perfect in the effortless way those who come from money always are, is on the epic quest to find Glendower, a lost Welsch king who, as legend has it, will grant you a wish if you find him. Gansey has been working with a professor for years and has pinpointed Glendower’s location to the town the school is in. So, he enlists some friends to help him in his search for Glendower. This includes Ronan, who, it turns out, can bring things from his dreams (or nightmares) into reality, Adam, the down-and-out local kid who attends the boarding school and works two jobs to pay tuition, Noah, who is (slight spoiler for Book One, highlight to read it) a ghost, and then Blue, a local girl who comes from a family of clairvoyants and has been told her entire life that the boy she loves will die if she kisses him.

I know. That’s a lot to take in and it sounds like it’s all over the place.

But, y’all. These books are amazing. They’re a magical realism version of A Separate Peace. And the writing is just perfection. There were times where I’d be reading along and would find myself with chills from just the way that Stiefvater constructs sentences. (You know you’re a word nerd when…)

These books tell the story of an epic quest mixed with class relations, teenage angst, elements of fantasy, and at some points, horror. It’s a gorgeous, high concept story that transports you but also stays grounded, always remembering that the roots of the story are in small town North Carolina. Where The Raven Boys is an introduction to a world you desperately want to live in and a group of people you want to hang out with, The Dream Thieves is an achingly beautiful, cacophonous nightmare filled with night horrors and frustration.

But that doesn’t mean reading it is frustrating. Stiefvater’s prose sing and often juxtapose that sense of grounded reality with magical elements in a way that I’ve not seen before. And I’m so excited to find out where the rest of the story is going.

Overall, you need these books in your life. You will love them and want to re-read them and look at them on your shelf when you’re not reading them and then remember how great they are and reread them some more.

And if for some reason you don’t like these books, well, then there’s no hope for you.

But you will love them and make them a staple in your library. Because these books are incredible.