The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2) by Maggie Stiefvater — Review

Maggie Stiefvater writes like someone who is not entirely sure the real world is more interesting than the ones inside her head, and she makes you feel the same way. The Dream Thieves is her best work: stranger than The Raven Boys, darker in its concerns, and built around a character — Ronan Lynch — who is one of the most extraordinary in recent YA fiction.

The Raven Cycle, if you haven’t started it: Blue Sargent is a non-psychic girl from a family of psychics, and the prophecy about her is that she will cause the death of her true love. She’s become entangled with four private school boys — Gansey, Adam, Noah, and Ronan — in a search for a sleeping Welsh king buried somewhere under the mountains of Virginia. That’s the skeleton of the series. What it’s actually about is considerably more slippery.

Ronan

The Raven Boys focused primarily on Gansey and Adam and Blue. The Dream Thieves belongs to Ronan, and it’s a gift. He’s been the most opaque character in the group — aggressive, Catholic, devoted to a very specific set of loyalties, seemingly in love with self-destruction. This book explains why, and the explanation is not what I expected.

Ronan can pull things from his dreams. Not metaphorically. He dreams objects, animals, sounds, nightmares into existence and brings them back. The implications of this — what it means, what it costs him, what the other things that live in his dream space want — are the engine of The Dream Thieves.

Stiefvater renders his dream sequences as genuinely uncanny, which is a harder trick than it sounds. Dream sequences in fiction are usually the moment when a book stops trusting itself. Hers feel inevitable.

The Grey Man

A new character arrives: the Grey Man, a hired killer who has come to Henrietta looking for the Greywaren — the thing that can pull from dreams. He is patient, intelligent, and completely without self-pity, and his scenes are some of the most striking in the book. His relationship with Maura (Blue’s mother) is unexpected and quietly touching.

The World

Henrietta, Virginia — the setting Stiefvater has built over two books now — is fully realised. It has a texture and a smell, a specific way that late summer feels in that landscape, an atmosphere that is never quite comfortable even when nothing frightening is happening. She manages to make the ordinary world strange without making it feel artificial.

Why YA Readers Will Love This

The Raven Cycle is for readers who have graduated from straightforward plots and want fiction that operates the way poetry does — by accumulation and association rather than event-by-event momentum. The Dream Thieves rewards readers who pay close attention to language, who notice when a metaphor is working on multiple levels, who are willing to sit with ambiguity rather than having everything resolved.

For readers who loved the mythology-soaked atmosphere of Percy Jackson but want something aimed at an older audience, this is the natural next step. The magic is stranger and less systematised; the emotional stakes are higher; the writing is more demanding.

For readers who have felt like they don’t fit — who are too intense or too angry or too much — Ronan is a character who makes all of that feel like something other than a flaw. He is difficult to love, and the book loves him without conditions, and that matters.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue comes next, and then The Raven King, which destroyed me in the best possible way. Start from The Raven Boys if you haven’t. This is a series that only makes sense read in order and only becomes fully itself at the end.

Published: September 2013 · Genre: YA fantasy · Series: The Raven Cycle, Book 2

Frequently Asked Questions

What is The Dream Thieves about? The second Raven Cycle book belongs to Ronan Lynch, the most opaque character in the group — who can pull things from his dreams into reality. ‘Not metaphorically — he dreams objects, animals, sounds, nightmares into existence and brings them back.’ The implications of this, ‘what it costs him, what the other things that live in his dream space want,’ are the engine of the book. A new character, the Grey Man, arrives seeking the Greywaren — the thing that can pull from dreams.

Why is Ronan Lynch described as extraordinary in The Dream Thieves? The review calls him ‘one of the most extraordinary characters in recent YA fiction.’ He has been ’the most opaque — aggressive, Catholic, devoted to a very specific set of loyalties, seemingly in love with self-destruction.’ The Dream Thieves explains why, and the explanation ‘is not what I expected.’ The review credits Stiefvater with loving him ‘without conditions,’ which is described as mattering for readers who feel they don’t fit.

How does Stiefvater handle dream sequences in The Dream Thieves? ‘Stiefvater renders his dream sequences as genuinely uncanny, which is a harder trick than it sounds — dream sequences in fiction are usually the moment when a book stops trusting itself. Hers feel inevitable.’ This is contrasted with the typical failure mode of dream sequences in fiction, positioning Stiefvater’s as an exceptional execution of a notoriously difficult technique.

Who is the Grey Man and why is he significant in The Dream Thieves? The Grey Man is ‘a hired killer who has come to Henrietta looking for the Greywaren — patient, intelligent, and completely without self-pity, with scenes that are some of the most striking in the book.’ His ‘relationship with Maura (Blue’s mother) is unexpected and quietly touching,’ adding a secondary romantic thread that the review describes as a pleasant surprise.

What kind of reader is The Dream Thieves best suited for? The review recommends it for ‘readers who have graduated from straightforward plots and want fiction that operates the way poetry does — by accumulation and association rather than event-by-event momentum.’ It ‘rewards readers who pay close attention to language, who notice when a metaphor is working on multiple levels, who are willing to sit with ambiguity.’ For readers who loved Percy Jackson’s mythology but want something aimed at an older audience, this is described as ’the natural next step.’

Further Reading from Authoritative Sources

• The Dream Thieves — Wikipedia’s The Dream Thieves article provides publication details and series context that helps readers understand the novel’s place in the Raven Cycle and its relationship to the other books.
• Maggie Stiefvater — Wikipedia’s Maggie Stiefvater article provides biographical and bibliographical context including the Raven Cycle and her other work, helping readers understand The Dream Thieves within her broader literary career.