Knitting While Reading: The Dream Thieves

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Reading: The Dream Thieves, by Maggie Stiefvater
Knitting: Milkweed Shawl by Me!

Do you know that feeling, when you’re reading a book and it’s going by so quickly—you just started it, and now you’re a third of the way through already?  And then two-thirds, and you’re feeling panicked but you can’t slow yourself down, until finally you are left with the desolation of having finished a wonderful book.

I felt that way about The Raven Boys, and it was no less true while reading the second book in the Raven Cycle series.  The Dream Thieves takes what appears to be a side-road from the ley line that was awakened at the end of The Raven Boys, which would feel frustrating in the hands of a lesser author, but Stiefvater invests readers so fully in her characters that we would follow them through whatever dark paths she sends them on—and things get dark indeed, here.  Ronan, the character we knew the least at the end of The Raven Boys, is a prisoner of his own dreams, and his dreams are following him into the world, while Blue is forced to confront the reality that Gansey must be her true love—and therefore that he must die—and Adam’s bargain with Cabeswater has consequences that are not quite what we would have foreseen.

Stiefvater’s writing is elegant, original, and ever-surprising.  Adam, Gansey, Ronan, and Blue are real to me.  I miss them, and can’t wait for Book 3.