What do you think?
Rate this book
Dreamer Trilogy #3
Greywaren
This is the story of the Lynch family.
Niall and Mór escaped their homeland for a new start, and lost themselves in what they found.
Declan has grown up as the responsible son, the responsible brother--only to find there is no way for him to keep his family safe.
Ronan has always lived on the edge between dreams and waking... but now that edge is gone, and he is falling.
Matthew has been the happy child, the brightest beam. But rebellion beckons, because it all feels like an illusion now.
This world was not made for such a family--a family with the power to make a world and break it. If they cannot save each other or themselves, we are all doomed.
Niall and Mór escaped their homeland for a new start, and lost themselves in what they found.
Declan has grown up as the responsible son, the responsible brother--only to find there is no way for him to keep his family safe.
Ronan has always lived on the edge between dreams and waking... but now that edge is gone, and he is falling.
Matthew has been the happy child, the brightest beam. But rebellion beckons, because it all feels like an illusion now.
This world was not made for such a family--a family with the power to make a world and break it. If they cannot save each other or themselves, we are all doomed.
Audiobook
First published October 18, 2022
324 people are currently reading
17744 people want to read
About the author
Maggie Stiefvater
62 books172k followersNew York Times bestselling author of The Shiver Trilogy, The Raven Cycle, and The Scorpio Races. Artist. Driver of things with wheels. Avid reader.
Maggie Stiefvater plays several musical instruments (most infamously, the bagpipes) and makes art in several media (most generally, colored pencils).
She lives in Virginia with her husband, their two children, many dogs, a bunch of fainting goats, and an irascible tuner car.
Maggie Stiefvater plays several musical instruments (most infamously, the bagpipes) and makes art in several media (most generally, colored pencils).
She lives in Virginia with her husband, their two children, many dogs, a bunch of fainting goats, and an irascible tuner car.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,694 reviews
June 2, 2022
Cover reveal coming tomorrow! But until then, how about an official description?
This is the story of the Lynch family.
Niall and Mór escaped their homeland for a new start, and lost themselves in what they found.
Declan has grown up as the responsible son, the responsible brother--only to find there is no way for him to keep his family safe.
Ronan has always lived on the edge between dreams and waking... but now that edge is gone, and he is falling.
Matthew has been the happy child, the brightest beam. But rebellion beckons, because it all feels like an illusion now.
This world was not made for such a family--a family with the power to make a world and break it. If they cannot save each other or themselves, we are all doomed.
(thank you in advance for your pre-orders, they make such a difference to the life of a book/ series!)
This is the story of the Lynch family.
Niall and Mór escaped their homeland for a new start, and lost themselves in what they found.
Declan has grown up as the responsible son, the responsible brother--only to find there is no way for him to keep his family safe.
Ronan has always lived on the edge between dreams and waking... but now that edge is gone, and he is falling.
Matthew has been the happy child, the brightest beam. But rebellion beckons, because it all feels like an illusion now.
This world was not made for such a family--a family with the power to make a world and break it. If they cannot save each other or themselves, we are all doomed.
(thank you in advance for your pre-orders, they make such a difference to the life of a book/ series!)
January 27, 2023
❀ blog ❀ thestorygraph ❀ letterboxd ❀ tumblr ❀ ko-fi ❀
2022 is officially dead to me.
review to come if & when i am emotionally ready...
look, i don't know what to say or write besides me not liking this book is one big & unwelcome twist. having loved every TRC book and book 1 and 2 in this dreamer trilogy, i wasn't even worried about not loving this. ah. what a fool. the more i read the more i struggled to reconcile myself with the existence of this book and that it wasn't something from a half-arsed dream of mine. no. it exists. it is the canon. anyway, i liked nothing about it. stiefvater's stiefvaterism, which i usually eat up, struck me as contrived, i was frustrated by how the trilogy's supposed central character is sidelined for much of this book, carmen farooq-lane really annoyed me and so did jordan & hennessy (all of whom i previously was fond of), declan too was kind of a let down in this one. bryde...after the previous books establish him as a such a key figure, well, i was confused by his purpose. adam, a character that i have come to love, see med very out-of-character, and not even in a 'he's grown/changed from the boy he used to be' way. ronan, my favourite character of all time...well, he is painfully underused and the scenes he is in are too purply and abstract. argh. i did not like any of it. the plot is meandering and confused, which could have worked, but then we get these reveals that just did not convince me at all. not only do they add inconsistencies to the trc universe but they seemed desperate to be 'clever'...i could go on. if i could brainwash myself into having a different response to this book i would which may sound extreme sure but ragazzi miei i can hardly articulate what these characters mean to me. that epilogue was cheesy in a very odd way that didn't fit the tone of the series at all. that ending scene especially just struck me as fan-service. okay, i'll actually stop now.
i still respect stiefvater as an author and i will always love the characters and the world that she has created however i will do my utmost to erase this book from my head. if you vibed with it i am super jealous but pls don't send me hate comments. like i said, if could change my perception of and perspective on this book i would. i am giving this a 3 stars but if i were honest i am only rating so high because i am super biased when it comes to stiefvater.
2022 is officially dead to me.
review to come if & when i am emotionally ready...
look, i don't know what to say or write besides me not liking this book is one big & unwelcome twist. having loved every TRC book and book 1 and 2 in this dreamer trilogy, i wasn't even worried about not loving this. ah. what a fool. the more i read the more i struggled to reconcile myself with the existence of this book and that it wasn't something from a half-arsed dream of mine. no. it exists. it is the canon. anyway, i liked nothing about it. stiefvater's stiefvaterism, which i usually eat up, struck me as contrived, i was frustrated by how the trilogy's supposed central character is sidelined for much of this book, carmen farooq-lane really annoyed me and so did jordan & hennessy (all of whom i previously was fond of), declan too was kind of a let down in this one. bryde...after the previous books establish him as a such a key figure, well, i was confused by his purpose. adam, a character that i have come to love, see med very out-of-character, and not even in a 'he's grown/changed from the boy he used to be' way. ronan, my favourite character of all time...well, he is painfully underused and the scenes he is in are too purply and abstract. argh. i did not like any of it. the plot is meandering and confused, which could have worked, but then we get these reveals that just did not convince me at all. not only do they add inconsistencies to the trc universe but they seemed desperate to be 'clever'...i could go on. if i could brainwash myself into having a different response to this book i would which may sound extreme sure but ragazzi miei i can hardly articulate what these characters mean to me. that epilogue was cheesy in a very odd way that didn't fit the tone of the series at all. that ending scene especially just struck me as fan-service. okay, i'll actually stop now.
i still respect stiefvater as an author and i will always love the characters and the world that she has created however i will do my utmost to erase this book from my head. if you vibed with it i am super jealous but pls don't send me hate comments. like i said, if could change my perception of and perspective on this book i would. i am giving this a 3 stars but if i were honest i am only rating so high because i am super biased when it comes to stiefvater.
July 21, 2023
DON'T TALK TO ME. i'm in mourning.
this can't be the end. i will throw a tantrum the likes of which this nation has never seen. i refuse to believe it.
sure, this was not a perfect book, and i miss gansey and i miss blue and i miss the psychic family and i miss everyone and everything that made the original series better than this follow up trilogy...
but mostly i just miss this whole world already.
these are the only YA books i've loved in what feels like a really long time, and so in a way, saying goodbye to them feels like saying goodbye to childhood. and i don't want to do either.
so i'm going to pretend, instead.
bottom line: i still believe adam and ronan to be the less interesting characters, and i still think this series lacks the plot and depth of the original, and i still find them less beautifully written and compelling, and i still see the adherence to 1,000 perspectives to be a detraction from this at every level...but mostly i just miss it already.
3.5
this can't be the end. i will throw a tantrum the likes of which this nation has never seen. i refuse to believe it.
sure, this was not a perfect book, and i miss gansey and i miss blue and i miss the psychic family and i miss everyone and everything that made the original series better than this follow up trilogy...
but mostly i just miss this whole world already.
these are the only YA books i've loved in what feels like a really long time, and so in a way, saying goodbye to them feels like saying goodbye to childhood. and i don't want to do either.
so i'm going to pretend, instead.
bottom line: i still believe adam and ronan to be the less interesting characters, and i still think this series lacks the plot and depth of the original, and i still find them less beautifully written and compelling, and i still see the adherence to 1,000 perspectives to be a detraction from this at every level...but mostly i just miss it already.
3.5
December 17, 2022
you are made of dreams and this world is not for you
tattoo this series onto my skin. ronan lynch, you have my heart forever. I think this was the perfect ending to this trilogy and the entire birdverse <3
tattoo this series onto my skin. ronan lynch, you have my heart forever. I think this was the perfect ending to this trilogy and the entire birdverse <3
April 25, 2025
the epilogue healed me
October 20, 2022
hey. hello. hi. tis i, the frenchiest fry. i don’t remember the last time i reviewed a book, and i’m not going to check. HOWEVER — the raven cycle saga has meant everything to me. the raven cycle is still and will most likely forever be, my favorite series of all time. the dreamer trilogy i have much more complicated feelings about, but that’s a conversation for another time. all that is to say, i owe it to these books to give them my informal formal goodbye. so, without further ado, here is my very, very disorganized 2 am musings on greywaren.
i would like to start with a disclaimer: i don’t ever get personal on here. i only have like five people from my real life on here, and i don’t like sharing stuff on the internet. but i’m an emotional wreck right now and i feel like it, so here we go.
i discovered the raven boys shortly after turning fifteen and shortly after developing an eating disorder. late summer/early fall 2019 was spent starving myself and binging the raven cycle books, then immediately listening to the audiobooks. i got into an analysis podcast about it, and i listened to that religiously too. covid hit and i was reading fanfiction, and i was looking at fanart, and i had a raven cycle blog. i fell into the deepest depression of my life fall 2020. one night, after spending hours staring at the night sky in the freezing cold, i stumbled inside and eating disordered myself into numbness. hunched over my empty cereal bowl, i put on the dream thieves audiobook to drown it all out. the scene that started playing was the one towards the end, when opal asks ronan “why do you hate you?” and ronan lynch tells her: “i don’t”
i don’t.
i felt hope for the first time in a long, long time.
april 2021, i was clutching that same book while my mom drove me to my first ed treatment appointment. after the appointment, i spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch with ronan lynch. i came to that same part.
“why do you hate you?”
“i don’t”
again. hope.
call down the hawk happened at the height of my illness, mister impossible happened only weeks after starting recovery. now, fall 2022, greywaren is out and i have read it, and i no longer refer to my eating disorder in the present tense. if we’re being technical, i consider myself recovered now for as long as i’d been sick when i first read the raven cycle. these books bookended the biggest challenge of my life. they got me through the worst, truly.
okay, now that that’s out of the way: the dreamer trilogy still doesn’t feel like the raven cycle. and that’s okay. it could never be her, quite honestly. still, there are multiple parts i love (the adam/ronan parts and the coming of age arc, namely), and even some that resonate harder with me than the raven cycle themes.
the dreamer trilogy is mainly about that weird stage between high-school and adulthood. you know the one, you’re not a teen, not an adult? i was fifteen when call down the hawk came out, so this originally went over my head. but i’m eighteen now, a freshman in college. i felt for ronan. i felt for him hard. i always do, which is the uncanny thing. ronan and i were self-destructive and devastated at the same time. i watched him heal with wonder: could i do the same? i did. and now we’re growing up together. there’s this whole millennial thing about harry potter and growing up, like they grew up with harry throughout the series. i was very young when those books came out, but i think i grew up with ronan lynch. not out of adolescence, like harry. but into adulthood.
as for greywaren specifically, it was absolutely mind-bending. i think i understand what happened (im currently functioning on minimal brain space) but i’ll definitely have to reread it. and yeah, while i did love all the ronan and declan scenes, i did have a few issues that restrain me from a five star rating:
- i’m still not crazy invested in hennessy or jordan. i like them okay, but as side characters. their chapters bored me in this book, if i’m being honest. i love jordan and declan though. truly, maggie stiefvater invented romance.
- similarly, i never did care about carmen or liliana. not really much else to say about them, except their chapters still read like chores i have to do to earn ronan and declan.
- bryde is still meh tbh.
- i’m a little more disappointed about matthew’s arc though. ronan grew up and discovered who he was. declan found love and peace and finally allowed himself to grieve his father. matthew, on the other hand, never really fulfilled himself as character. i kept waiting for him to strike me, but i’m still kinda indifferent? again, declan was spectacularly developed, and ronan is forever my darling, so i guess one lynch brother had to fall flat.
- as happy as i was about gansey and blue’s appearance, i have to say, a part of me is still devastated about noah. he really is gone, isn’t he? i didn’t expect him to be mentioned. but it still hurts.
- there are few things that were like ???? for instance, adam breaks up with ronan for, like, a single day. and then he comes crawling back and delivers the best monologue on adam parrish ever and it’s my favorite scene in the book. it still felt like unnecessary conflict though.
- also mor and the new fenian? tf were they doing at the barns at the end? is ronan lynch really just like. okay with two people masquerading with his parents’ faces around his house??? why were they even there in the first place????
- also, the whole ronan-and-adam-are-lost-in-the-ether-forever-oh-no was bullshit, didn’t believe it for a second, pissed me off. (matthew, on the other hand, i did actually think was gone for good at the end. he wasn’t, but maggie got me there.)
- ok wait. so i do actually have a bone to pick. changing topics completely, but seriously maggie. wtf??? why the hell would she change the whole ronan/niall dynamic last minute? why!!! okay so apparently declan was always niall’s actual favorite son, niall only gave ronan more attention because he wanted ronan to feel loved so ronan didn’t destroy the world, yada yada. i’m fine with ronan not being the one to find out the dirt on his dad. he already came to terms with him and his death and his grief in the raven cycle. declan had an absolutely incredible, gut-wrenching arch about just that.
but niall allegedly pretending to love ronan best gave me pause. it isn’t fair, to be honest. ronan’s character introduction in the raven boys is about how he loved his dad more than his brothers did. it’s heavily implied throughout the series that niall loved ronan the most too. that’s special. it’s maybe not fair, but i think it is sacred. why couldn’t maggie just have let ronan have that? i know she came up with that on the spot when she decided to maximize the emotional punch with declan. she really said “do you know what would throw the readers for a loop? taking this relationship that’s been established as one thing over a decade and saying it’s FAKE lmao! wait! that’s not enough! niall was actually chill with straight up murdering baby ronan! plot twist, right? niall only let ronan live because DECLAN’S, NIALL’s ALWAYS-FAVORITE, loved him. nice.”
no. no, actually i hate that so much. ronan doesn’t find out about this, and i hope to god he never does. can you imagine how horrifically crushing that would be? i know declan got the niall plot in this book, but damn maggie. that was uncalled for.
now for the positives, because boy. i felt them strongly.
- first of all, maggie delivered. ronan and declan finally hugged it out, guys. the lynch brothers became friends again. that was it, that was the trilogy. if the raven cycle is about friendship, the dreamer trilogy is about brotherhood. and maggie brought down the whole damn city.
- also, i didn’t think i could ever say this but . . . niall lynch didn’t actually do anything wrong, did he? he just loved his kids and didn’t understand anything ever on any day at any time. all this time we were lead to believe he was a terrible person, when he wasn’t. he wasn’t. just like ronan convinced the readers throughout the raven cycle that declan was terrible, declan convinced us the same thing about niall. it’s the damn unreliable narrators for me, bro.
- maggie also got me good when she was like “hey, wedding :)” and i was like “PYNCH WEDDING????” and then it was predictably declan and jordan. but THEN—
- the epilogue !!!!!!!!! was so good it made me physically ill. like, i might actually vomit. seriously. everyone got the happy ending they deserved. we saw all our old favorites, hell, even maura, calla, and freaking gwenllian made an appearance. henry and his mother were there. blue and gansey were there, and gansey and ronan had one last of those conversations that’s made the raven cycle so, so special to me. gansey raised ronan to adulthood. ronan acknowledged a change in gansey we never really got to see on page, but it was there. declan’s wedding gift. niall fucking lynch, you guys. niall fucking lynch. he got us all in the end.
and finally. the last few paragraphs. just when i thought it was over, it happened. ronan and adam. a ring. a happy ending.
thank you, maggie stiefvater. thank you blue and gansey. thank you noah. thank you adam parrish and ronan lynch.
thank you for everything.
i would like to start with a disclaimer: i don’t ever get personal on here. i only have like five people from my real life on here, and i don’t like sharing stuff on the internet. but i’m an emotional wreck right now and i feel like it, so here we go.
i discovered the raven boys shortly after turning fifteen and shortly after developing an eating disorder. late summer/early fall 2019 was spent starving myself and binging the raven cycle books, then immediately listening to the audiobooks. i got into an analysis podcast about it, and i listened to that religiously too. covid hit and i was reading fanfiction, and i was looking at fanart, and i had a raven cycle blog. i fell into the deepest depression of my life fall 2020. one night, after spending hours staring at the night sky in the freezing cold, i stumbled inside and eating disordered myself into numbness. hunched over my empty cereal bowl, i put on the dream thieves audiobook to drown it all out. the scene that started playing was the one towards the end, when opal asks ronan “why do you hate you?” and ronan lynch tells her: “i don’t”
i don’t.
i felt hope for the first time in a long, long time.
april 2021, i was clutching that same book while my mom drove me to my first ed treatment appointment. after the appointment, i spent the rest of the day curled up on the couch with ronan lynch. i came to that same part.
“why do you hate you?”
“i don’t”
again. hope.
call down the hawk happened at the height of my illness, mister impossible happened only weeks after starting recovery. now, fall 2022, greywaren is out and i have read it, and i no longer refer to my eating disorder in the present tense. if we’re being technical, i consider myself recovered now for as long as i’d been sick when i first read the raven cycle. these books bookended the biggest challenge of my life. they got me through the worst, truly.
okay, now that that’s out of the way: the dreamer trilogy still doesn’t feel like the raven cycle. and that’s okay. it could never be her, quite honestly. still, there are multiple parts i love (the adam/ronan parts and the coming of age arc, namely), and even some that resonate harder with me than the raven cycle themes.
the dreamer trilogy is mainly about that weird stage between high-school and adulthood. you know the one, you’re not a teen, not an adult? i was fifteen when call down the hawk came out, so this originally went over my head. but i’m eighteen now, a freshman in college. i felt for ronan. i felt for him hard. i always do, which is the uncanny thing. ronan and i were self-destructive and devastated at the same time. i watched him heal with wonder: could i do the same? i did. and now we’re growing up together. there’s this whole millennial thing about harry potter and growing up, like they grew up with harry throughout the series. i was very young when those books came out, but i think i grew up with ronan lynch. not out of adolescence, like harry. but into adulthood.
as for greywaren specifically, it was absolutely mind-bending. i think i understand what happened (im currently functioning on minimal brain space) but i’ll definitely have to reread it. and yeah, while i did love all the ronan and declan scenes, i did have a few issues that restrain me from a five star rating:
- i’m still not crazy invested in hennessy or jordan. i like them okay, but as side characters. their chapters bored me in this book, if i’m being honest. i love jordan and declan though. truly, maggie stiefvater invented romance.
- similarly, i never did care about carmen or liliana. not really much else to say about them, except their chapters still read like chores i have to do to earn ronan and declan.
- bryde is still meh tbh.
- i’m a little more disappointed about matthew’s arc though. ronan grew up and discovered who he was. declan found love and peace and finally allowed himself to grieve his father. matthew, on the other hand, never really fulfilled himself as character. i kept waiting for him to strike me, but i’m still kinda indifferent? again, declan was spectacularly developed, and ronan is forever my darling, so i guess one lynch brother had to fall flat.
- as happy as i was about gansey and blue’s appearance, i have to say, a part of me is still devastated about noah. he really is gone, isn’t he? i didn’t expect him to be mentioned. but it still hurts.
- there are few things that were like ???? for instance, adam breaks up with ronan for, like, a single day. and then he comes crawling back and delivers the best monologue on adam parrish ever and it’s my favorite scene in the book. it still felt like unnecessary conflict though.
- also mor and the new fenian? tf were they doing at the barns at the end? is ronan lynch really just like. okay with two people masquerading with his parents’ faces around his house??? why were they even there in the first place????
- also, the whole ronan-and-adam-are-lost-in-the-ether-forever-oh-no was bullshit, didn’t believe it for a second, pissed me off. (matthew, on the other hand, i did actually think was gone for good at the end. he wasn’t, but maggie got me there.)
- ok wait. so i do actually have a bone to pick. changing topics completely, but seriously maggie. wtf??? why the hell would she change the whole ronan/niall dynamic last minute? why!!! okay so apparently declan was always niall’s actual favorite son, niall only gave ronan more attention because he wanted ronan to feel loved so ronan didn’t destroy the world, yada yada. i’m fine with ronan not being the one to find out the dirt on his dad. he already came to terms with him and his death and his grief in the raven cycle. declan had an absolutely incredible, gut-wrenching arch about just that.
but niall allegedly pretending to love ronan best gave me pause. it isn’t fair, to be honest. ronan’s character introduction in the raven boys is about how he loved his dad more than his brothers did. it’s heavily implied throughout the series that niall loved ronan the most too. that’s special. it’s maybe not fair, but i think it is sacred. why couldn’t maggie just have let ronan have that? i know she came up with that on the spot when she decided to maximize the emotional punch with declan. she really said “do you know what would throw the readers for a loop? taking this relationship that’s been established as one thing over a decade and saying it’s FAKE lmao! wait! that’s not enough! niall was actually chill with straight up murdering baby ronan! plot twist, right? niall only let ronan live because DECLAN’S, NIALL’s ALWAYS-FAVORITE, loved him. nice.”
no. no, actually i hate that so much. ronan doesn’t find out about this, and i hope to god he never does. can you imagine how horrifically crushing that would be? i know declan got the niall plot in this book, but damn maggie. that was uncalled for.
now for the positives, because boy. i felt them strongly.
- first of all, maggie delivered. ronan and declan finally hugged it out, guys. the lynch brothers became friends again. that was it, that was the trilogy. if the raven cycle is about friendship, the dreamer trilogy is about brotherhood. and maggie brought down the whole damn city.
- also, i didn’t think i could ever say this but . . . niall lynch didn’t actually do anything wrong, did he? he just loved his kids and didn’t understand anything ever on any day at any time. all this time we were lead to believe he was a terrible person, when he wasn’t. he wasn’t. just like ronan convinced the readers throughout the raven cycle that declan was terrible, declan convinced us the same thing about niall. it’s the damn unreliable narrators for me, bro.
- maggie also got me good when she was like “hey, wedding :)” and i was like “PYNCH WEDDING????” and then it was predictably declan and jordan. but THEN—
- the epilogue !!!!!!!!! was so good it made me physically ill. like, i might actually vomit. seriously. everyone got the happy ending they deserved. we saw all our old favorites, hell, even maura, calla, and freaking gwenllian made an appearance. henry and his mother were there. blue and gansey were there, and gansey and ronan had one last of those conversations that’s made the raven cycle so, so special to me. gansey raised ronan to adulthood. ronan acknowledged a change in gansey we never really got to see on page, but it was there. declan’s wedding gift. niall fucking lynch, you guys. niall fucking lynch. he got us all in the end.
and finally. the last few paragraphs. just when i thought it was over, it happened. ronan and adam. a ring. a happy ending.
thank you, maggie stiefvater. thank you blue and gansey. thank you noah. thank you adam parrish and ronan lynch.
thank you for everything.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 23, 2022
I’m so disappointed in this I want to cry
***
So I finally think I’m ready to talk about why I was so disappointed in this. There will be lots of spoilers so be prepared. I’d also like to point out that I love TRC and still do. I also loved Call Down the Hawk, and enjoyed Mister Impossible, so it’s not like I went into this book planning to be negative of hate it. It was just such a disappointment that my love for the characters couldn’t make up for it.
First thing, Ronan was barely in any of this book. He was “asleep” for 80% of the book. And then Maggie decided to make him a dream. I hated this so much. Why add such a huge piece of back story to a character in a spin off series and at the last 10% of the final book. The whole thing about the Lynch brothers was that there was the dream, the dreamer, and Declan. And not to mention the line “the son of a dream and the son of a dreamer” doesn’t even count now since Ronan wasn’t the son of Niall and dream mom.
Second thing, Adam. When he first saw Ronan he was stuck asleep and Adam just said “oh well, here’s your watch bye” and left not caring whether Ronan would live or die. That’s not the Adam I know and I hated it. How could Adam Parrish who loves Ronan Lynch not care that he might just die?? I know he came back after but I still can’t believe he’s just leave him like that in the first place. Then their reunion was a half assed scene, their “makeup” wasn’t even detailed, we just got told they danced around each other in their weird dream state and made up. I feel like this was a massive cop out cause Maggie didn’t know how to write a detailed scene of them actually going over all their issues.
Third thing, Lilliana, the woman who said she would not die and be Carmen till she’s old, died. Maggie said “wait a minute I have no one for Hennessy to have her happy ever after with so I’m gonna kill off Liliana and then Carmen can be with Hennessy.” Bullshit.
Fourth, Jordan and Hennessy. What did they even do in this book?? They talked to the art people but until the end of the book they just did nothing and added nothing to the story.
Fifth, Declan, who became the main character in this trilogy. I never would’ve guessed that I’d love Declan when I started this series but he really became the main character and stole the show. I loved him but again I feel like he hardly did anything in the story? And he just happened to get himself shot before the final moment so he could conveniently sit it out. This was mostly the same thing with Matthew. He has some moments but then he just got himself lost for a while and randomly showed up at the end. They are still the two I loved the most in this book and I felt so bad for the stress Declan was under and how Matthew was only living half a life.
Oh and I almost forgot about Nathan, who turned out the be the villain in the end which felt so random. Looking back on the first book, the “villain” was supposed to be the night wash and the people Carmen was working for. But then they were actually all dreams?? And the night wash issue just wasn’t an issue anymore after being Nathan? I feel like that wasn’t even explained well. I know Ronan got the tattoo but I can’t even remember how Matthew is fine or Jordan.
The epilogue wasn’t all that satisfying either. I’m happy for Declan and Jordan, but Ronan’s casual proposal didn’t do it for me. Not to mention that I felt like it was implied that Ronan and Adam spend a lot of time apart? There just wasn’t any Pynch moments in this book that I enjoyed and it’s such a shame cause “Call Down the Hawk” has some great moments but there was nothing else after that. I just wanted one chapter where they actually sat down and had a real conversation and talk things out and just have time to be in love and we got none of it.
Overall this was just not enjoyable. Maggie pulled new canon details out of nowhere and it felt so messy and unplanned. Details in this book changed so much details even from TRC and I’m really not a fan of it all. It just makes it feel like Maggie was making things up as she does along and I prefer preplanned plots.
Honestly I’m just gonna pretend this trilogy never happened (but I will remember that I now love Declan.)
Update: I remembered more things to be mad about! The lack of Opal!! Maggie just threw her off into the forest and she got mentioned once I think in book two when we saw her, and then never again? Ronan’s literal child gotten rid of, he didn’t even have partial custody he just gave her up and never thought about her again. I love Opal so much and I can’t imagine why Maggie made her such a big part of TRC only to get rid of her in TDT.
***
So I finally think I’m ready to talk about why I was so disappointed in this. There will be lots of spoilers so be prepared. I’d also like to point out that I love TRC and still do. I also loved Call Down the Hawk, and enjoyed Mister Impossible, so it’s not like I went into this book planning to be negative of hate it. It was just such a disappointment that my love for the characters couldn’t make up for it.
First thing, Ronan was barely in any of this book. He was “asleep” for 80% of the book. And then Maggie decided to make him a dream. I hated this so much. Why add such a huge piece of back story to a character in a spin off series and at the last 10% of the final book. The whole thing about the Lynch brothers was that there was the dream, the dreamer, and Declan. And not to mention the line “the son of a dream and the son of a dreamer” doesn’t even count now since Ronan wasn’t the son of Niall and dream mom.
Second thing, Adam. When he first saw Ronan he was stuck asleep and Adam just said “oh well, here’s your watch bye” and left not caring whether Ronan would live or die. That’s not the Adam I know and I hated it. How could Adam Parrish who loves Ronan Lynch not care that he might just die?? I know he came back after but I still can’t believe he’s just leave him like that in the first place. Then their reunion was a half assed scene, their “makeup” wasn’t even detailed, we just got told they danced around each other in their weird dream state and made up. I feel like this was a massive cop out cause Maggie didn’t know how to write a detailed scene of them actually going over all their issues.
Third thing, Lilliana, the woman who said she would not die and be Carmen till she’s old, died. Maggie said “wait a minute I have no one for Hennessy to have her happy ever after with so I’m gonna kill off Liliana and then Carmen can be with Hennessy.” Bullshit.
Fourth, Jordan and Hennessy. What did they even do in this book?? They talked to the art people but until the end of the book they just did nothing and added nothing to the story.
Fifth, Declan, who became the main character in this trilogy. I never would’ve guessed that I’d love Declan when I started this series but he really became the main character and stole the show. I loved him but again I feel like he hardly did anything in the story? And he just happened to get himself shot before the final moment so he could conveniently sit it out. This was mostly the same thing with Matthew. He has some moments but then he just got himself lost for a while and randomly showed up at the end. They are still the two I loved the most in this book and I felt so bad for the stress Declan was under and how Matthew was only living half a life.
Oh and I almost forgot about Nathan, who turned out the be the villain in the end which felt so random. Looking back on the first book, the “villain” was supposed to be the night wash and the people Carmen was working for. But then they were actually all dreams?? And the night wash issue just wasn’t an issue anymore after being Nathan? I feel like that wasn’t even explained well. I know Ronan got the tattoo but I can’t even remember how Matthew is fine or Jordan.
The epilogue wasn’t all that satisfying either. I’m happy for Declan and Jordan, but Ronan’s casual proposal didn’t do it for me. Not to mention that I felt like it was implied that Ronan and Adam spend a lot of time apart? There just wasn’t any Pynch moments in this book that I enjoyed and it’s such a shame cause “Call Down the Hawk” has some great moments but there was nothing else after that. I just wanted one chapter where they actually sat down and had a real conversation and talk things out and just have time to be in love and we got none of it.
Overall this was just not enjoyable. Maggie pulled new canon details out of nowhere and it felt so messy and unplanned. Details in this book changed so much details even from TRC and I’m really not a fan of it all. It just makes it feel like Maggie was making things up as she does along and I prefer preplanned plots.
Honestly I’m just gonna pretend this trilogy never happened (but I will remember that I now love Declan.)
Update: I remembered more things to be mad about! The lack of Opal!! Maggie just threw her off into the forest and she got mentioned once I think in book two when we saw her, and then never again? Ronan’s literal child gotten rid of, he didn’t even have partial custody he just gave her up and never thought about her again. I love Opal so much and I can’t imagine why Maggie made her such a big part of TRC only to get rid of her in TDT.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 15, 2022
The Raven Cycle universe has always meant the world to me. It’s been my rock since I was around twelve years old, so finally arriving at this conclusion feels pretty surreal (if a little bittersweet, too). I’m going to miss these characters so much, though it feels amazing having witnessed their journey come to a close more perfect than I could’ve ever imagined.
It has always been impossible for me to shut up about Ronan. He’s my favourite fictional character ever, and I’ve rambled on about him for a whopping seven reviews now. Why does he mean so much to me? I could hardly tell you. Why does one like their favourite colour, or their favourite song so much? You could list off a few things, but no one else could truly understand the feeling you’ve attached to it.
Ronan has put me through the ringer in this trilogy; he balances the beauty and danger of magic in his hands, harnessing the essence of dreams in sleep, while feeling suffocated by the confines of reality during his every waking moment. More than anything, I hoped this ending would grant Ronan one thing: the desire to live in wakefullness, finding love in the future awaiting him with Adam and his his brothers. My heart aches just thinking about Ronan, but I’m so happy with the way Maggie wrapped up his character-arc. The Adam/Chainsaw scene? The rooftop scene? I may as well have disintegrated into a puddle.
Although Ronan will always be the king of my heart, Greywaren saw Declan Lynch as the new source of all my love, pain and excessive suffering. When I think of him, I think of sorrow. Witnessing a man deprived of his childhood, having no choice but to parent his orphaned brothers, finally tapping into his feelings instead of repressing them? I cried, a lot. It was a welcome surprise to finally gain perspective into Declan’s childhood at the barns, and to follow the revelations of falsehood that coloured his relationship with Niall, Môr, Matthew and Ronan for so many years. From the beginning of The Dreamer Trilogy, it became evident that Declan was growing overwhelmed with keeping the love in him locked away. His constant internal battle between protecting his brothers and allowing himself the freedoms he so badly desired made it all the more rewarding when his facade finally came crashing down, with Maggie crafting the perfect end to his brilliant character. His happiness makes me so happy.
I finished this book weeping, of all things. Although the Lynch brothers—and Adam (chapter 12!!)—had me reduced to tears an embarrassing number of times in this conclusion, the last paragraph of Greywaren really did me in. The final few lines were so softly beautiful, featuring one particular moment I’ve imaged playing out, yet didn’t dare to hope for in canon. Naturally, Maggie deciding to write such a perfect scene meant I read and reread said final passage over and over, my heart threatening to burst each time. I stayed up till’ midmorning to finish this book, but with an end like that, I couldn’t be bothered to regret a thing.
I could write forever about Matthew, Adam, Jordan, Henessy, Bryde, Farooq and this entire cast for all their incredible complexities. I won’t keep you for too much longer, though. This trilogy—and TRC as a whole—is a masterpiece in my mind, though I’m far past the ‘biased’ threshold. Still, this series is exceptionally written, and I’ll persist that readers who enjoy flowery prose, a touch of magic, and heartwarming found family need to try reading The Raven Boys, and eventually this series. For now, though, it’s goodbye to my favourite fictional universe! I’m sure I’ll be back for reread, after reread, content to know that all will end well for Ronan and his beloveds.
Before reading:
Mister Impossible was a RIDE, and like Ronan, I am not okay.
That being said, manifesting the following:
🕯🕯🕯 PLEASE LET BOOK THREE BE TITLED "Ronan N. Lynch thinks real hard about it and realizes that his brothers and boyfriend really do love him and only want the best for him". 🕯🕯🕯
see y'all in a year.... for the end of the trilogy... Ronan against the world rn...
It has always been impossible for me to shut up about Ronan. He’s my favourite fictional character ever, and I’ve rambled on about him for a whopping seven reviews now. Why does he mean so much to me? I could hardly tell you. Why does one like their favourite colour, or their favourite song so much? You could list off a few things, but no one else could truly understand the feeling you’ve attached to it.
Ronan has put me through the ringer in this trilogy; he balances the beauty and danger of magic in his hands, harnessing the essence of dreams in sleep, while feeling suffocated by the confines of reality during his every waking moment. More than anything, I hoped this ending would grant Ronan one thing: the desire to live in wakefullness, finding love in the future awaiting him with Adam and his his brothers. My heart aches just thinking about Ronan, but I’m so happy with the way Maggie wrapped up his character-arc. The Adam/Chainsaw scene? The rooftop scene? I may as well have disintegrated into a puddle.
Although Ronan will always be the king of my heart, Greywaren saw Declan Lynch as the new source of all my love, pain and excessive suffering. When I think of him, I think of sorrow. Witnessing a man deprived of his childhood, having no choice but to parent his orphaned brothers, finally tapping into his feelings instead of repressing them? I cried, a lot. It was a welcome surprise to finally gain perspective into Declan’s childhood at the barns, and to follow the revelations of falsehood that coloured his relationship with Niall, Môr, Matthew and Ronan for so many years. From the beginning of The Dreamer Trilogy, it became evident that Declan was growing overwhelmed with keeping the love in him locked away. His constant internal battle between protecting his brothers and allowing himself the freedoms he so badly desired made it all the more rewarding when his facade finally came crashing down, with Maggie crafting the perfect end to his brilliant character. His happiness makes me so happy.
I finished this book weeping, of all things. Although the Lynch brothers—and Adam (chapter 12!!)—had me reduced to tears an embarrassing number of times in this conclusion, the last paragraph of Greywaren really did me in. The final few lines were so softly beautiful, featuring one particular moment I’ve imaged playing out, yet didn’t dare to hope for in canon. Naturally, Maggie deciding to write such a perfect scene meant I read and reread said final passage over and over, my heart threatening to burst each time. I stayed up till’ midmorning to finish this book, but with an end like that, I couldn’t be bothered to regret a thing.
I could write forever about Matthew, Adam, Jordan, Henessy, Bryde, Farooq and this entire cast for all their incredible complexities. I won’t keep you for too much longer, though. This trilogy—and TRC as a whole—is a masterpiece in my mind, though I’m far past the ‘biased’ threshold. Still, this series is exceptionally written, and I’ll persist that readers who enjoy flowery prose, a touch of magic, and heartwarming found family need to try reading The Raven Boys, and eventually this series. For now, though, it’s goodbye to my favourite fictional universe! I’m sure I’ll be back for reread, after reread, content to know that all will end well for Ronan and his beloveds.
Before reading:
Mister Impossible was a RIDE, and like Ronan, I am not okay.
That being said, manifesting the following:
🕯🕯🕯 PLEASE LET BOOK THREE BE TITLED "Ronan N. Lynch thinks real hard about it and realizes that his brothers and boyfriend really do love him and only want the best for him". 🕯🕯🕯
see y'all in a year.... for the end of the trilogy... Ronan against the world rn...
Want to read
July 10, 2021I don't really know what's happening in this series anymore, but I am still choosing to believe it leads to a Pynch marriage, hooray.
December 21, 2022
[update update: 20 dec 2022] further thoughts upon rereading:
• happy to see that this book, like most of maggie’s work, only grows more magical when revisited. there’s so many moments of emotional payoff and call and response from previous moments of struggle and pain and clever parallels btwn past and present that all feel so satisfying to close the series on.
• i do still wish this book was longer and more gradual in its developments but that feels less consequential upon rereading. it really is hard to experience this series linearly, partially bc they’re not intended to be understood that way and partially bc of how much i’ve mentally dwelled in them by rereading / discussing / thinking them over and over again for years.
• not enough of ronan but more so there isn’t nearly enough of adam —
• MATTHEW. anyways.
• bumping her up to 4 stars yeah
[update: 10 nov 2022] back to dump my thoughts and feelings about this book somewhere so here’s a somewhat thorough review. this review will contain spoilers so here’s your warning to look away if you haven’t read greywaren (or the raven cycle).
personal context: i read the first book in this universe, the raven boys, somewhere around the time that the raven king (4th and final book in the raven cycle) was being released. i was probably around 18 years old, which is also about how old the characters in the raven cycle were. i’m now 24, so it’s been six years, give or take. more context: i have loved these books and these characters so well and for so long that its hard to be completely objective about whether or not this was a good finale. did i enjoy the book? yes. did i in fact love it, adore it, buy several copies of it, will definitely reread it? of course.
but more importantly, did i feel it accomplished what it set out to do? only somewhat. i mostly feel underwhelmed. given how high the bar was set with both call down the hawk and mister impossible, i don't think i ever expected this book to disappoint me, but the more i think about it, the weaker this conclusion feels.
this entire book felt like the final act of a single book instead of the final act of an entire trilogy. the number of plot events crammed into these 300 pages is honestly insane, resulting in a rushed, aggressively spliced-together feeling. none of the individual moments have any room to breathe. aside from hennessy and maybe declan, none of the characters experienced the kind of nuanced, careful development i've come to expect from stiefvater's work. jordan's development in mister impossible was lovely, but here she felt completely sidelined. farooq lane finally got her shining moment after 2.5 books of absurdly slow buildup, but it was so very belated and brief that i don't understand why we couldn't have done more with her before this point. matthew's character arc almost felt forgotten. he punches declan and steals his car to find bryde and then...spends the rest of the book hiding in a museum with bryde while a Voice in his head tempts him into becoming a visionary? just very unserious and pointless.
but most tragic to me was ronan's arc. these books are in large part an extended metaphor for chronic illness, with ronan at their heart as arguably the central character. call down the hawk felt very mature and contemplative and melancholy because of how well it showed ronan's restlessness and his quiet misery at being left behind. his family, friends, and boyfriend are all grown up and have gone their separate ways, while he languishes at home, unable to live an ordinary life due to his compulsive dreaming and his dependency on the ley line. ronan spends most of the first book slowly, miserably dying in a world that doesn't sustain him, until he makes the decision to fight for his own survival.
in mister impossible, ronan is still dying, but he’s doing it very differently. rather than continue to attempt to be ordinary, he’s isolated himself completely from everyone he loves and decided to follow bryde in a destructive mission to reshape the world into something that will sustain him. ronan spends this book locked in what reads very much like a looping fever dream or an escalating nightmare sequence or a manic episode, or all three. he clings desperately to hennessy as the last source of human connection left to him, because he sees her as equal to himself in a world where he's always been singular. but when she breaks and leaves at last ronan is forced to realize that bryde is a product of his own dreaming. in an attempt to free himself from the cage of his body's dependency on the ley line, he's trapped himself inside his own mind and can no longer tell dream from reality.
greywaren picks up here, at what is ronan's absolute lowest point. he's spiraled as far down as he can possibly go. he's at rock bottom. there's nothing left for him except to either give in and fade, or to climb his way back to his humanity, ideally with the help of his loved ones. and there's a lot of ways in which stiefvater could have shown his recovery from the isolation and desperation of mister impossible, but she mostly just ... doesn't. ronan spends most of the book asleep and offpage. when we do get his narration, he's an amorphous consciousness drifting through the "sweetmetal sea", inhabiting different people's sweetmetals and looking in on human life this way. for a lot of the book he hardly feels like ronan lynch at all, which i personally felt was a tragic failing after having come so far with such a powerfully, vibrantly written character.
authorial context: if you’ve seen maggie stiefvater’s twitter or instagram, you may have noticed her saying on multiple different occasions that she changed the story she was going to tell because of antagonistic responses from a handful of fans over a single character: adam parrish. (if you’re a normal person and have never heard of this petty and childish internet drama before, i truly wish i was more like you, or more like myself before i made a twitter account.) now, while adam was a central character in the raven cycle, he is only a side character in the dreamer trilogy, he appears in only a handful of scenes, and he does not narrate (except for a very brief moment in this final book iirc). i don’t know if he was always going to play such a minor role, but the author seems at least to want to convince us that he was initially going to be a major player and was later demoted due to twitter bullying. if that's the case, i think that explains a lot of what's missing from this book.
while adam's limited page time in the previous two books made sense and in fact interestingly served to enlarge his presence throughout ronan's arc, i don't think greywaren was ever going to work without a thorough resolution of adam's arc, through adam's own perspective. instead of getting chapter after chapter of ronan drifting around aimlessly and eavesdropping on important scenes of other characters, we should've started out with adam reckoning with the betrayal/argument with ronan, ronan's missing status, and then the discovery of his sleeping body. ronan should have been withheld until his body was found by declan or adam, rather than immediately narrating his way through ridiculously passive and complete self-discovery. ronan's spiral is necessarily interdependent with adam's obscured character arc, and therefore ronan's healing must also intertwine with adam's development and self-conception. adam represents many things in the dreamer trilogy, but at the simplest level, he represents ronan's future. and after having spent 2 books with ronan struggling towards hope and life and a real future, i think we deserved more than just that monologue and the instantaneous resolution of their meeting in the sweetmetal sea.
which brings me to my last point: resolution. beyond character arcs, the plot is all too quickly resolved, and i'm frustrated with how easy it was. the whole apocalypse and moderators deal? turns out those weren't that serious or relevant, let's move along. ronan was never going to end the world, and nor was hennessy. no instead let's chuck in an antagonist who's essentially a completely new character with basically zero development through the trilogy. nathan farooq-lane has no connection to anyone in the story except carmen, who herself is easily the least developed character from the main cast. it almost feels like she purely existed so that the nathan reveal could happen conveniently at the end and thereby defang ronan and hennessy as potential apocalypse causers.
so while greywaren hits all the basic beats that it should, it just doesn't do it with the finesse or the emotional maturity that i've come to expect from stiefvater's writing. and after the incredible coherence of the first two books and all the love i have for these characters, particularly ronan, i can't help but be frustrated with a finale that feels so bare minimum.
• happy to see that this book, like most of maggie’s work, only grows more magical when revisited. there’s so many moments of emotional payoff and call and response from previous moments of struggle and pain and clever parallels btwn past and present that all feel so satisfying to close the series on.
• i do still wish this book was longer and more gradual in its developments but that feels less consequential upon rereading. it really is hard to experience this series linearly, partially bc they’re not intended to be understood that way and partially bc of how much i’ve mentally dwelled in them by rereading / discussing / thinking them over and over again for years.
• not enough of ronan but more so there isn’t nearly enough of adam —
• MATTHEW. anyways.
• bumping her up to 4 stars yeah
[update: 10 nov 2022] back to dump my thoughts and feelings about this book somewhere so here’s a somewhat thorough review. this review will contain spoilers so here’s your warning to look away if you haven’t read greywaren (or the raven cycle).
personal context: i read the first book in this universe, the raven boys, somewhere around the time that the raven king (4th and final book in the raven cycle) was being released. i was probably around 18 years old, which is also about how old the characters in the raven cycle were. i’m now 24, so it’s been six years, give or take. more context: i have loved these books and these characters so well and for so long that its hard to be completely objective about whether or not this was a good finale. did i enjoy the book? yes. did i in fact love it, adore it, buy several copies of it, will definitely reread it? of course.
but more importantly, did i feel it accomplished what it set out to do? only somewhat. i mostly feel underwhelmed. given how high the bar was set with both call down the hawk and mister impossible, i don't think i ever expected this book to disappoint me, but the more i think about it, the weaker this conclusion feels.
this entire book felt like the final act of a single book instead of the final act of an entire trilogy. the number of plot events crammed into these 300 pages is honestly insane, resulting in a rushed, aggressively spliced-together feeling. none of the individual moments have any room to breathe. aside from hennessy and maybe declan, none of the characters experienced the kind of nuanced, careful development i've come to expect from stiefvater's work. jordan's development in mister impossible was lovely, but here she felt completely sidelined. farooq lane finally got her shining moment after 2.5 books of absurdly slow buildup, but it was so very belated and brief that i don't understand why we couldn't have done more with her before this point. matthew's character arc almost felt forgotten. he punches declan and steals his car to find bryde and then...spends the rest of the book hiding in a museum with bryde while a Voice in his head tempts him into becoming a visionary? just very unserious and pointless.
but most tragic to me was ronan's arc. these books are in large part an extended metaphor for chronic illness, with ronan at their heart as arguably the central character. call down the hawk felt very mature and contemplative and melancholy because of how well it showed ronan's restlessness and his quiet misery at being left behind. his family, friends, and boyfriend are all grown up and have gone their separate ways, while he languishes at home, unable to live an ordinary life due to his compulsive dreaming and his dependency on the ley line. ronan spends most of the first book slowly, miserably dying in a world that doesn't sustain him, until he makes the decision to fight for his own survival.
in mister impossible, ronan is still dying, but he’s doing it very differently. rather than continue to attempt to be ordinary, he’s isolated himself completely from everyone he loves and decided to follow bryde in a destructive mission to reshape the world into something that will sustain him. ronan spends this book locked in what reads very much like a looping fever dream or an escalating nightmare sequence or a manic episode, or all three. he clings desperately to hennessy as the last source of human connection left to him, because he sees her as equal to himself in a world where he's always been singular. but when she breaks and leaves at last ronan is forced to realize that bryde is a product of his own dreaming. in an attempt to free himself from the cage of his body's dependency on the ley line, he's trapped himself inside his own mind and can no longer tell dream from reality.
greywaren picks up here, at what is ronan's absolute lowest point. he's spiraled as far down as he can possibly go. he's at rock bottom. there's nothing left for him except to either give in and fade, or to climb his way back to his humanity, ideally with the help of his loved ones. and there's a lot of ways in which stiefvater could have shown his recovery from the isolation and desperation of mister impossible, but she mostly just ... doesn't. ronan spends most of the book asleep and offpage. when we do get his narration, he's an amorphous consciousness drifting through the "sweetmetal sea", inhabiting different people's sweetmetals and looking in on human life this way. for a lot of the book he hardly feels like ronan lynch at all, which i personally felt was a tragic failing after having come so far with such a powerfully, vibrantly written character.
authorial context: if you’ve seen maggie stiefvater’s twitter or instagram, you may have noticed her saying on multiple different occasions that she changed the story she was going to tell because of antagonistic responses from a handful of fans over a single character: adam parrish. (if you’re a normal person and have never heard of this petty and childish internet drama before, i truly wish i was more like you, or more like myself before i made a twitter account.) now, while adam was a central character in the raven cycle, he is only a side character in the dreamer trilogy, he appears in only a handful of scenes, and he does not narrate (except for a very brief moment in this final book iirc). i don’t know if he was always going to play such a minor role, but the author seems at least to want to convince us that he was initially going to be a major player and was later demoted due to twitter bullying. if that's the case, i think that explains a lot of what's missing from this book.
while adam's limited page time in the previous two books made sense and in fact interestingly served to enlarge his presence throughout ronan's arc, i don't think greywaren was ever going to work without a thorough resolution of adam's arc, through adam's own perspective. instead of getting chapter after chapter of ronan drifting around aimlessly and eavesdropping on important scenes of other characters, we should've started out with adam reckoning with the betrayal/argument with ronan, ronan's missing status, and then the discovery of his sleeping body. ronan should have been withheld until his body was found by declan or adam, rather than immediately narrating his way through ridiculously passive and complete self-discovery. ronan's spiral is necessarily interdependent with adam's obscured character arc, and therefore ronan's healing must also intertwine with adam's development and self-conception. adam represents many things in the dreamer trilogy, but at the simplest level, he represents ronan's future. and after having spent 2 books with ronan struggling towards hope and life and a real future, i think we deserved more than just that monologue and the instantaneous resolution of their meeting in the sweetmetal sea.
which brings me to my last point: resolution. beyond character arcs, the plot is all too quickly resolved, and i'm frustrated with how easy it was. the whole apocalypse and moderators deal? turns out those weren't that serious or relevant, let's move along. ronan was never going to end the world, and nor was hennessy. no instead let's chuck in an antagonist who's essentially a completely new character with basically zero development through the trilogy. nathan farooq-lane has no connection to anyone in the story except carmen, who herself is easily the least developed character from the main cast. it almost feels like she purely existed so that the nathan reveal could happen conveniently at the end and thereby defang ronan and hennessy as potential apocalypse causers.
so while greywaren hits all the basic beats that it should, it just doesn't do it with the finesse or the emotional maturity that i've come to expect from stiefvater's writing. and after the incredible coherence of the first two books and all the love i have for these characters, particularly ronan, i can't help but be frustrated with a finale that feels so bare minimum.
April 26, 2023
best book i have read in my life
October 7, 2022
12 hours post greywaren and i fr need to go into recovery. i feel so hollow and withered and empty inside i have no idea what to do with my life now.
----------
i am sick, i am sobbing, i am dying, i was retweeted by and responded to by maggie stiefvater.
this is the end of my childhood, my youth, my magic from the last 10 years.
don't text.
review to come.
----------
I AM ABOUT TO THROW UP OR GO INTO CARDIAC ARREST I HAVE THE BOOK I HAVE THE BOOK GREYWAREN IS IN MY HANDS I HAVE THE BOOK AND I AM READING IT THIS IS THE LAST TIME IN TEN YEARS THAT I WILL BE READING A BOOK FROM THIS SERIES FOR THE FIRST TIME I AM NOT OKAY
----------
and the title is here. and i have been crying because of how perfect it is.
it's really going to be all over and come full circle, huh?
literally feeling like i need to be institutionalized
----------
trying to come to terms with the fact that this series legit RAISED me since i was 12 years old and that i will be 22 (and graduated from undergrad--where i am legit writing my thesis on TRC currently) when the very last book comes out and i will be forced to find something else to hold on to and to replace my personality with but that terrifies me to no end because i based my entire life on TRC and the gangsey (who are and have been my absolute bestest friends) and i have never felt an emotional connection as deep or meaningful as i have with these books and that when i was a lonely and deeply sad young person it was only my falling apart, thoroughly read and annotated through stack of TRC books that could comfort me with my millionth reread and the thought that i will never again have another release date to look forward to, or will have to wonder about what happens to adam in the next book, or theorize about gansey's adventures or ronan's mental health ever ever again makes me want to lay down in the ground, have dirt covered over me and let flowers grow from my rotting body haha :D
TL;DR: WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE AND I'M READY TO PAY FOR MY COFFIN !!!!
death ❤️
----------
i am sick, i am sobbing, i am dying, i was retweeted by and responded to by maggie stiefvater.
this is the end of my childhood, my youth, my magic from the last 10 years.
don't text.
review to come.
----------
I AM ABOUT TO THROW UP OR GO INTO CARDIAC ARREST I HAVE THE BOOK I HAVE THE BOOK GREYWAREN IS IN MY HANDS I HAVE THE BOOK AND I AM READING IT THIS IS THE LAST TIME IN TEN YEARS THAT I WILL BE READING A BOOK FROM THIS SERIES FOR THE FIRST TIME I AM NOT OKAY
----------
and the title is here. and i have been crying because of how perfect it is.
it's really going to be all over and come full circle, huh?
literally feeling like i need to be institutionalized
----------
trying to come to terms with the fact that this series legit RAISED me since i was 12 years old and that i will be 22 (and graduated from undergrad--where i am legit writing my thesis on TRC currently) when the very last book comes out and i will be forced to find something else to hold on to and to replace my personality with but that terrifies me to no end because i based my entire life on TRC and the gangsey (who are and have been my absolute bestest friends) and i have never felt an emotional connection as deep or meaningful as i have with these books and that when i was a lonely and deeply sad young person it was only my falling apart, thoroughly read and annotated through stack of TRC books that could comfort me with my millionth reread and the thought that i will never again have another release date to look forward to, or will have to wonder about what happens to adam in the next book, or theorize about gansey's adventures or ronan's mental health ever ever again makes me want to lay down in the ground, have dirt covered over me and let flowers grow from my rotting body haha :D
TL;DR: WE HAVE A RELEASE DATE AND I'M READY TO PAY FOR MY COFFIN !!!!
death ❤️
January 26, 2024
after the way mister impossible ended, the only thing i have to say is: what the actual fuck
October 18, 2022
fuck.
I'M SO SORRY MAGGIE NEVER SHOULD HAVE DOUBTED YOU BESTIE
I'M SO SORRY MAGGIE NEVER SHOULD HAVE DOUBTED YOU BESTIE
October 27, 2022
brb writing this through a steady stream of tears
i actually can't believe it's over. ronan lynch I love you so fucking much. adam parrish I love you so fucking much. declan lynch I love you so fucking much.
"and declan loved ronan. so ronan lived."
i actually can't believe it's over. ronan lynch I love you so fucking much. adam parrish I love you so fucking much. declan lynch I love you so fucking much.
"and declan loved ronan. so ronan lived."
October 19, 2022
i don’t know how to live in a post-greywaren world
![Profile Image for Anna [Bran. San. Stan].](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.gr-assets.com%2Fimages%2FS%2Fcompressed.photo.goodreads.com%2Fusers%2F1593184464i%2F98245866._UX200_CR0%2C0%2C200%2C200_.jpg&w=128&q=75)
December 28, 2022
Beautiful. I have no words. I have tears. I am not one to shed a tear because of art. But this was art shaped by words. This was joy and pain and something that is usually buried deep within.
The Lynch brothers. The brothers Lynch. How I will miss them.
“This is a story about the brothers Lynch.
There were three of them, and if you didn’t like one, try another, because the Lynch brother others found too sour or too sweet might be just to your taste. The Lynch brothers, the orphans Lynch. All of them had been made by dreams, one way or another. They were handsome devils, down to the last one.“
The Lynch brothers. The brothers Lynch. How I will miss them.
June 9, 2023
ALL THE STARS
”You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.”
I want this entire series engraved into my bones. These books entirely consumed me; the characters (especially Adam and the Lynch brothers) have wormed their way into my soul and will not be leaving at any point
Stiefvater’s prose is so beautiful & deliciously smooth I could almost drink it - I want more of this universe so badly I’m already itching for a re-read (!!)
I will let some of my favourite quotes do the rest of the talking for me because my heart is sad:
➵ “There was a strange sort of magic to being a person holding another person after not being held by someone for a long time. There was another strange sort of magic to understanding you’d been using words and silence the wrong way for a long time.”
➵ “Love was one of this species’ weapons. It had so many hooks: the knowledge it was conditional, the desire to believe it was real.”
➵ “God had not yet answered, but Ronan respected the reticence. Fathers were not always there. They had other things to do.”
➵ “Tamquam, said Ronan, and Adam said, Alter idem.”
➵ “He made up the task of guarding the world, which meant nothing to him, instead of guarding his family, which meant everything to him.”
➵ “You were the story I chose for myself.”
Now pls give me a moment as I lay on the ground and stare at the ceiling in silence for a little while.
”You are made of dreams and this world is not for you.”
I want this entire series engraved into my bones. These books entirely consumed me; the characters (especially Adam and the Lynch brothers) have wormed their way into my soul and will not be leaving at any point
Stiefvater’s prose is so beautiful & deliciously smooth I could almost drink it - I want more of this universe so badly I’m already itching for a re-read (!!)
I will let some of my favourite quotes do the rest of the talking for me because my heart is sad:
➵ “There was a strange sort of magic to being a person holding another person after not being held by someone for a long time. There was another strange sort of magic to understanding you’d been using words and silence the wrong way for a long time.”
➵ “Love was one of this species’ weapons. It had so many hooks: the knowledge it was conditional, the desire to believe it was real.”
➵ “God had not yet answered, but Ronan respected the reticence. Fathers were not always there. They had other things to do.”
➵ “Tamquam, said Ronan, and Adam said, Alter idem.”
➵ “He made up the task of guarding the world, which meant nothing to him, instead of guarding his family, which meant everything to him.”
➵ “You were the story I chose for myself.”
Now pls give me a moment as I lay on the ground and stare at the ceiling in silence for a little while.
October 22, 2022
there are 2 versions of me now. the one Before greywaren, and the one After
April 20, 2023
not just the fact that this book could basically ruin the entire raven cycle story world, on a technical level it is just SO BAD. i know maggie likes big casts, but there are still far too many characters trying to narrate this book. the plot gets stretched so, so thin between them and most of the choices re: pacing and action are just... atrocious. i'm going to list out some of my grievances in no particular order because, if margaret made me sit through this nonsense for hours, then i get to receive the vindication of fleshing out why it's terrible for my own hour.
1. jordan remaining awake because she's trying to make a sweetmetal is so ridiculous that it should count as a plothole. that is categorically and explicitly how sweetmetals DO NOT WORK.
2. uh where'd ronan go
3. declan going on a murder spree was sexy as hell actually. thank you for that. the imaginary book that i built up in my head surrounding that scene really let it hit just right. everything that happened in his arc after that was ridiculous, lazy, and forced, tho. this is the same universe where gansey and adam could get into nuanced fights over three misplaced words even when they were on each other's sides, and suddenly your readership is supposed to accept a broken family who betrays, abandons, and shoots each other reuniting under one roof with no development?
4. the only person you did dirtier than liliana was carmen. NO, YOU KNOW WHAT--
4.5. NOBODY ENDS THEIR CHARACTER ARC IN THIS BOOK?
- Matthew fake dies, disappears, and then shows up at the very end with a hand-wave explanation for what happened and no satisfactory resolution to the identity he's been struggling with throughout the entire trilogy. He should have just died if he was going to end up literally shoved under a table for half of the book.
- Liliana just explodes the second that Carmen has a new romantic interest because Maggie didn't want to risk it looking like she was killing a character in a wlw arc even though that's exactly what she was doing. Like. You make the magical rules, ma'am, so you did not have to trap your lesbian as a middle-aged oracle with apparently lots of fake memories of her long life with Carmen because???? they knew each other for like 3 weeks. The natural progression of their story line was surely for the visionary aspect of Liliana's abilities to be neutralized, not for it to fucking vaporize her in her younger girlfriend's arms
- SPEAKING OF WHICH. Carmen's resolution in this story is to get shot. She gets shot. That's it. She also literally could have died and nothing in the narrative would have changed. She gets shot, and it is genuinely not clear whether she's alive or dead until the epilogue when she and Hennessey are suddenly dating because they got together offscreen because you're just supposed to assume they worked out their extreme behavioral differences offscreen and are now very happy together.
- It's literally never even confirmed that Nathan Farooq-Lane dies.
5. This one I'm just genuinely angry about, and it's like a 3-part anger. Firstly, bringing Nathan back as the big bad is so out of left field. Secondly, making him, one of the only two explicitly middle eastern characters Maggie has ever written (to my knowledge) obsessed with killing and bombs is in EXTREMELY poor taste and, at BEST, passively engages in a hugely racist stereotype. And lastly, how did none of her editors raise a single flag at the idea of her fictional stakes being the bombing of Boston, which a great many Americans have an ACTIVE RECENT MEMORY OF?
6. That epilogue was so slapdash and full of fan service. Calla literally never even MET Declan or Jordan, but for some reason we are supposed to care that she's officiating their wedding. And beyond the fact that it is SUPER TACKY to get engaged at someone else's wedding, Ronan and Adam spent the first whole part of the epilogue expositing how they do not care about engagement and have found a system that works for their separate lifestyles while still prioritizing their relationship with each other????
7. The dreaming aspect of these books used to be so unique and thrilling. Now it's just every fucking plot twist that someone is a dream, when the narrative does not even bother to explore whether that changes a person in any meaningful way. The most we ever get regarding this concept is Matthew's depression and subsequent rebellions, NONE of which is taken seriously by either Declan or the narrative, and, again, is never resolved. Why do we care if someone's a dream when it supposedly doesn't change a thing about them? What makes it a revelation? Is the only purpose of it to prove that Ronan has always been the super specialest boy ever? Because he was a thousand times more interesting to read about before he had some awkward destiny literally crammed into him. I didn't hate the Raven King, but it was bad enough when GANSEY got a whole forest crammed inside of him to fix the plot lynchpin (ha) that Maggie had been building up for the entire previous series. If that's the only way she can end a story, then she can't expect her hype to carry her through whatever project she is working on next.
I sincerely hope this book is just a misstep, otherwise i dont know what the future will bring for my relationship w/ stiefvater projects
1. jordan remaining awake because she's trying to make a sweetmetal is so ridiculous that it should count as a plothole. that is categorically and explicitly how sweetmetals DO NOT WORK.
2. uh where'd ronan go
3. declan going on a murder spree was sexy as hell actually. thank you for that. the imaginary book that i built up in my head surrounding that scene really let it hit just right. everything that happened in his arc after that was ridiculous, lazy, and forced, tho. this is the same universe where gansey and adam could get into nuanced fights over three misplaced words even when they were on each other's sides, and suddenly your readership is supposed to accept a broken family who betrays, abandons, and shoots each other reuniting under one roof with no development?
4. the only person you did dirtier than liliana was carmen. NO, YOU KNOW WHAT--
4.5. NOBODY ENDS THEIR CHARACTER ARC IN THIS BOOK?
- Matthew fake dies, disappears, and then shows up at the very end with a hand-wave explanation for what happened and no satisfactory resolution to the identity he's been struggling with throughout the entire trilogy. He should have just died if he was going to end up literally shoved under a table for half of the book.
- Liliana just explodes the second that Carmen has a new romantic interest because Maggie didn't want to risk it looking like she was killing a character in a wlw arc even though that's exactly what she was doing. Like. You make the magical rules, ma'am, so you did not have to trap your lesbian as a middle-aged oracle with apparently lots of fake memories of her long life with Carmen because???? they knew each other for like 3 weeks. The natural progression of their story line was surely for the visionary aspect of Liliana's abilities to be neutralized, not for it to fucking vaporize her in her younger girlfriend's arms
- SPEAKING OF WHICH. Carmen's resolution in this story is to get shot. She gets shot. That's it. She also literally could have died and nothing in the narrative would have changed. She gets shot, and it is genuinely not clear whether she's alive or dead until the epilogue when she and Hennessey are suddenly dating because they got together offscreen because you're just supposed to assume they worked out their extreme behavioral differences offscreen and are now very happy together.
- It's literally never even confirmed that Nathan Farooq-Lane dies.
5. This one I'm just genuinely angry about, and it's like a 3-part anger. Firstly, bringing Nathan back as the big bad is so out of left field. Secondly, making him, one of the only two explicitly middle eastern characters Maggie has ever written (to my knowledge) obsessed with killing and bombs is in EXTREMELY poor taste and, at BEST, passively engages in a hugely racist stereotype. And lastly, how did none of her editors raise a single flag at the idea of her fictional stakes being the bombing of Boston, which a great many Americans have an ACTIVE RECENT MEMORY OF?
6. That epilogue was so slapdash and full of fan service. Calla literally never even MET Declan or Jordan, but for some reason we are supposed to care that she's officiating their wedding. And beyond the fact that it is SUPER TACKY to get engaged at someone else's wedding, Ronan and Adam spent the first whole part of the epilogue expositing how they do not care about engagement and have found a system that works for their separate lifestyles while still prioritizing their relationship with each other????
7. The dreaming aspect of these books used to be so unique and thrilling. Now it's just every fucking plot twist that someone is a dream, when the narrative does not even bother to explore whether that changes a person in any meaningful way. The most we ever get regarding this concept is Matthew's depression and subsequent rebellions, NONE of which is taken seriously by either Declan or the narrative, and, again, is never resolved. Why do we care if someone's a dream when it supposedly doesn't change a thing about them? What makes it a revelation? Is the only purpose of it to prove that Ronan has always been the super specialest boy ever? Because he was a thousand times more interesting to read about before he had some awkward destiny literally crammed into him. I didn't hate the Raven King, but it was bad enough when GANSEY got a whole forest crammed inside of him to fix the plot lynchpin (ha) that Maggie had been building up for the entire previous series. If that's the only way she can end a story, then she can't expect her hype to carry her through whatever project she is working on next.
I sincerely hope this book is just a misstep, otherwise i dont know what the future will bring for my relationship w/ stiefvater projects
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 18, 2022
i am existing on a whole other dimensional plane rn
October 31, 2022
Well, folks, it’s over. There’s an ending and it was fine. The Dreamer trilogy was fine. It was exciting action adventure and there were STAKES and stuff. And in the finale we finally got more Adam. But, sigh, it’s just not TRC, is it? Maybe I’d like it more if I wasn’t fresh off a reread of TRC. That was a huge mistake going into this finale. TRC was magical. But this trilogy I think is just sort of mired in Stiefvater’s disillusionment with her fans and publishing in general. It feels obnoxiously obtuse to the series that preceded it. Like if Hennessy read TRC and was like, “What’s with all this magic and kissing and shit? Fuck that. I want more snark and explosions next time.” Also, I still find Hennessy shallow and a bit cliché. Her fan art makes her out to be so much cooler than she actually is on the page.
But my main frustration is a lack of Lynch brothers. This is a story about them and yet none of them have a single meaningful conversation. Totally frustrating. And, no, I’m not counting the monosyllabic grunts at each other for two sentences in the epilogue.
Also … I guess we’re never going to learn when someone tossed the damn Pig wheel into the lake.
After fermenting on this for a few days, I actually dropped a star. I honestly think this is the worst book Stiefvater has ever written and, more generally, just a poorly written story. Yikes.
But my main frustration is a lack of Lynch brothers. This is a story about them and yet none of them have a single meaningful conversation. Totally frustrating. And, no, I’m not counting the monosyllabic grunts at each other for two sentences in the epilogue.
Also … I guess we’re never going to learn when someone tossed the damn Pig wheel into the lake.
After fermenting on this for a few days, I actually dropped a star. I honestly think this is the worst book Stiefvater has ever written and, more generally, just a poorly written story. Yikes.
October 21, 2022
"They were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted.”
This wasn’t by any means a bad book, I enjoyed it just fine, but I can’t help but feel some disappointment. For this book in particular but also for the trilogy overall.
One of my biggest problems is that these three books were supposed to be about Ronan, but the more the story progressed the more Ronan got lost in it. He was such a passive character in this book except for the end—and in general I feel like he took a backseat in these books. It frustrates me because I shouldn’t have to ask for more Ronan in a Ronan trilogy.
I also wish there had been more Adam. We got one sigle Adam POV chapter in a trilogy that explored so many POVs, which is really annoying. And I wasn’t a fan of how rushed the resolution of the Pynch conflict was, like we couldn’t even get a conversation about it? It felt like a slap in the face. If you want to create conflict between them you also have to commit to fixing it, not to have them just vibrate with each other on another plane of existence and suddenly everything’s fine. Adam and Ronan barely have a conversation in this book. It was a huge, huge disappointment after waiting all this time. At least they got a happy ending, but still.
In general I wanted another direction for this trilogy, there are some elements that I really enjoyed anyway but there are some that I disliked or left me wanting more or something different.
I don’t want to write a totally negative review and like I said there are some things that I did like. I love Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style and she’s very good at creating a certain vibe for her world. I think she’s less strong with plots and especially with sticking the landing but I can’t deny she’s got a talent for writing and creating interesting characters. I was really surprised by Niall Lynch’s redemption arc but I didn’t mind it. I also came out of this trilogy loving Declan when I never cared about him before, and I’m happy that the epilogue was his wedding with Jordan.
This book reveals that Ronan isn’t quite human and that he’s some sort of entity (?) that was dreamed into a human body by Niall and Mòr. I appreciate how in the end this twist means that Ronan chooses to be human, or rather he chooses to have a human life, with all the ugliness and pain and beautiful things that come with it.
Hennessy and Carmen were an interesting pairing, I wish that’d been explored more. It had so much potential that was barely explored. I liked all the reflections on Hennessy struggling to let Jordan go.
So this is it. I believe Maggie said this is the last time she writes in this world and honestly, I hope she sticks to that. I think, whether because of the fandom or because she wants to move on, that she lost steam for this project at some point. I’d rather that she puts this world to rest now and that she leaves the rest to out imagination.
This wasn’t by any means a bad book, I enjoyed it just fine, but I can’t help but feel some disappointment. For this book in particular but also for the trilogy overall.
One of my biggest problems is that these three books were supposed to be about Ronan, but the more the story progressed the more Ronan got lost in it. He was such a passive character in this book except for the end—and in general I feel like he took a backseat in these books. It frustrates me because I shouldn’t have to ask for more Ronan in a Ronan trilogy.
I also wish there had been more Adam. We got one sigle Adam POV chapter in a trilogy that explored so many POVs, which is really annoying. And I wasn’t a fan of how rushed the resolution of the Pynch conflict was, like we couldn’t even get a conversation about it? It felt like a slap in the face. If you want to create conflict between them you also have to commit to fixing it, not to have them just vibrate with each other on another plane of existence and suddenly everything’s fine. Adam and Ronan barely have a conversation in this book. It was a huge, huge disappointment after waiting all this time. At least they got a happy ending, but still.
In general I wanted another direction for this trilogy, there are some elements that I really enjoyed anyway but there are some that I disliked or left me wanting more or something different.
I don’t want to write a totally negative review and like I said there are some things that I did like. I love Maggie Stiefvater’s writing style and she’s very good at creating a certain vibe for her world. I think she’s less strong with plots and especially with sticking the landing but I can’t deny she’s got a talent for writing and creating interesting characters. I was really surprised by Niall Lynch’s redemption arc but I didn’t mind it. I also came out of this trilogy loving Declan when I never cared about him before, and I’m happy that the epilogue was his wedding with Jordan.
This book reveals that Ronan isn’t quite human and that he’s some sort of entity (?) that was dreamed into a human body by Niall and Mòr. I appreciate how in the end this twist means that Ronan chooses to be human, or rather he chooses to have a human life, with all the ugliness and pain and beautiful things that come with it.
Hennessy and Carmen were an interesting pairing, I wish that’d been explored more. It had so much potential that was barely explored. I liked all the reflections on Hennessy struggling to let Jordan go.
So this is it. I believe Maggie said this is the last time she writes in this world and honestly, I hope she sticks to that. I think, whether because of the fandom or because she wants to move on, that she lost steam for this project at some point. I’d rather that she puts this world to rest now and that she leaves the rest to out imagination.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 7, 2022
god what a perfect fucking ending im sobbing
October 15, 2022
i am broken. irreparably, cosmically broken.
May 1, 2023
⚠️ Definitivamente habrá spoilers.⚠️
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cuando inicié esta trilogía tenía 19 años y ahora estoy a nada de cumplir 23, además, mi vida era muy diferente, y puede que no se note aquí, porque casi nunca hablo de mi vida personal por acá, pero he cambiado la idea que tenía sobre un montón de cosas que antes hacían que esta trilogía significara mucho más que ahora.
Dreamer Trilogy son tres libros dedicados al amor fraternal, ya sea hacia hermanos de sangre o hermanos del alma, y para la Mon actual el amor fraternal no es tan importante, así que hay un montón de cosas que me parecen demasiado, como todas las veces que se romantiza la idea de perdonar lo imperdonable solo porque es la familia.
Es innegable que a Declan Lynch le tocó la peor parte de esta familia de raritos, lo irónico es que él es el más normal de todos y la autora no se cansa de recordárnoslo cada vez que se toma su medicamento para la acidez estomacal (sí, a mí también me da risa) como cualquier persona común y corriente que vive bajo mucho estrés. Sin embargo, la autora soluciona una vida de tener que solucionar problemas ajenos con un "eras mi favorito" que no me es suficiente porque Declan no tenía la obligación de solucionar los problemas de TODA LA MALDITA FAMILIA. Esto no significa que Declan me gustara, de hecho la mayor parte del tiempo me caía mal por su actitud condescendiente y autoritaria, pero comprendo por qué llegó a creer que su palabra era la última ya que, después de todo, solo es un joven que tuvo que hacerse cargo de las estupideces de sus padres e intentar que sus hermanos malagradecidos tuvieran una vida estable. Declan se merecía algo mejor, pese a lo ácido que es, y me alegra que tuviera un final feliz.
Ronan Lynch es el mediano y el mundo le queda chico. Siempre hubieron un montón de pistas de lo impresionante que podía ser si tan solo le hacía caso a la voz que le gritaba más, aún cuando en la saga principal casi no tuvo participación (o ya no me acuerdo, tengo que releer esos libros). En esta trilogía llegamos a un nivel tan alto que hasta pareciera que la saga principal solo existió para que Ronan pudiera llegar hasta aquí (no estoy diciendo que así sea), pero no sé qué pasó que en este último libro se sintió como un personaje secundario. Supongo que es lo que conlleva ser prácticamente un dios en una trama que necesita que las cosas se vayan a la mierda antes de que alguien las resuelva. No justifico nada de lo que Ronan hizo, tomó unas decisiones tan malas que me daban ganas de golpearlo y salir en defensa de Adam, Declan, Matthew, Bryde y el mundo entero, pero sigue siendo mi favorito de los hermanos Lynch porque puedo simpatizar con esa sensación de que nada es suficiente. ¿Qué exageró un poquito en su intento de obtener algo que lo satisfaciera? Eso no se pone en duda, está clarísimo como el agua. Me alegra que él mismo lo reconozca.
Matthew Lynch es el pequeño y todos lo quieren, incluyéndome. Desde la saga principal hasta los primeros libros de esta trilogía, Matthew era el único que no había hecho nada; si no fuera porque su creador lo hizo con la habilidad de caerle bien a todo el mundo, quizá no habría sobrevivido a la sociedad, ya que tiene un carácter sumiso y una inocencia peligrosa. Para Declan, controlar cada aspecto de la vida de Matthew era la única manera de mantenerlo a salvo, pero en este libro cruza la línea y Matthew finalmente se revela. A mí me hizo sentir muy orgullosa su acto de rebeldía, aunque hubiera deseado que en el epílogo se nos diera más información respecto a qué hará en el futuro, ya que tal parece que sigue siendo el heredero de Declan y eso me hace preguntarme si lograron romper la relación fraternal tan tóxica que llevaban. Matthew no es esencial para la trama principal, pero es el lado bueno de la familia Lynch, por lo que resulta sencillo comprender por qué Declan quiere protegerlo de todo y por qué Ronan nunca pudo renunciar a él.
Y ahí termina la lista de hermanos Lynch, pero en el libro hay otros personajes importantes: Jordan, Hennessy y Carmen.
Yo ya había dicho que sentía que Jordan solo estaba allí para ser "la persona especial" de Declan y en este libro comprobé que tenía razón, la muchacha pasó de ser un personaje más o menos interesante a ser la novia que espera en casa y con ello me hizo sentir que perdí gran parte de mi tiempo leyendo sus puntos de vista.
Hennessy y Carmen evolucionaron bien, tuvieron más protagonismo del que en un principio parecía y son buenos personajes individuales, lo que agradezco. Me gustó tanto la evolución de Hennessy que, si llegara a haber un spin-off de ella (hey, lo dudo), lo leería. Es mi crush literario más fuerte del momento.
Ah, el probrecito de Adam sigue siendo muy secundario. Me da pena, creo que podría ser un personaje inolvidable si no lo dejaran siempre atrás (? Cuando empecé esta trilogía una de las razones principales era que quería ver drama entre Ronan y él, pero actualmente no me encanta la pareja que conforman, de hecho llegué a pensar que sería mejor si Ronan conoce a alguien más, pero sí siento injusto que Adam no sobresalga pese a que tiene potencial.
En resumen, mi yo de hace unos años habría llorado por todas las escenas dramáticas entre hermanos que tiene este libro y le habría dado cinco estrellas por el final tan rosita, pero hoy en día solo puedo pensar en que la autora es una listilla: es buena haciendo creer al lector que pasará una cosa y al final la cambia o la transforma en algo completamente inesperado. Me quedo con Ronan Apocalíptico, mi personaje favorito, y Hennessy, que se echa unas frases dignas de Instagram. Es un buen libro juvenil porque te obliga a recordar detalles minúsculos para entender las cosas que van pasando y que un autor logre que tantas cosas tengan sentido al unirlas no es tan sencillo como parece. No le doy cinco estrellas porque soy de la opinión que cuando el contexto es una amenaza mundial, no es realista que todos sobrevivan y, además, se me hizo un poquito denso.
Ha sido una experiencia agradable seguir a Ronan desde el comienzo de todo y me despido de este universo sabiendo que me acompañó por muchas de las etapas más horribles de mi vida:)
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Cuando inicié esta trilogía tenía 19 años y ahora estoy a nada de cumplir 23, además, mi vida era muy diferente, y puede que no se note aquí, porque casi nunca hablo de mi vida personal por acá, pero he cambiado la idea que tenía sobre un montón de cosas que antes hacían que esta trilogía significara mucho más que ahora.
Dreamer Trilogy son tres libros dedicados al amor fraternal, ya sea hacia hermanos de sangre o hermanos del alma, y para la Mon actual el amor fraternal no es tan importante, así que hay un montón de cosas que me parecen demasiado, como todas las veces que se romantiza la idea de perdonar lo imperdonable solo porque es la familia.
Es innegable que a Declan Lynch le tocó la peor parte de esta familia de raritos, lo irónico es que él es el más normal de todos y la autora no se cansa de recordárnoslo cada vez que se toma su medicamento para la acidez estomacal (sí, a mí también me da risa) como cualquier persona común y corriente que vive bajo mucho estrés. Sin embargo, la autora soluciona una vida de tener que solucionar problemas ajenos con un "eras mi favorito" que no me es suficiente porque Declan no tenía la obligación de solucionar los problemas de TODA LA MALDITA FAMILIA. Esto no significa que Declan me gustara, de hecho la mayor parte del tiempo me caía mal por su actitud condescendiente y autoritaria, pero comprendo por qué llegó a creer que su palabra era la última ya que, después de todo, solo es un joven que tuvo que hacerse cargo de las estupideces de sus padres e intentar que sus hermanos malagradecidos tuvieran una vida estable. Declan se merecía algo mejor, pese a lo ácido que es, y me alegra que tuviera un final feliz.
"Esta es la historia de los hermanos Lynch.
Había tres; y si a alguien no le gustaba uno de ellos, no tenía más que probar con el siguiente, porque el hermano Lynch que resultaba demasiado ácido o demasiado dulce para algunos podía ser justamente del gusto de otros. "
Ronan Lynch es el mediano y el mundo le queda chico. Siempre hubieron un montón de pistas de lo impresionante que podía ser si tan solo le hacía caso a la voz que le gritaba más, aún cuando en la saga principal casi no tuvo participación (o ya no me acuerdo, tengo que releer esos libros). En esta trilogía llegamos a un nivel tan alto que hasta pareciera que la saga principal solo existió para que Ronan pudiera llegar hasta aquí (no estoy diciendo que así sea), pero no sé qué pasó que en este último libro se sintió como un personaje secundario. Supongo que es lo que conlleva ser prácticamente un dios en una trama que necesita que las cosas se vayan a la mierda antes de que alguien las resuelva. No justifico nada de lo que Ronan hizo, tomó unas decisiones tan malas que me daban ganas de golpearlo y salir en defensa de Adam, Declan, Matthew, Bryde y el mundo entero, pero sigue siendo mi favorito de los hermanos Lynch porque puedo simpatizar con esa sensación de que nada es suficiente. ¿Qué exageró un poquito en su intento de obtener algo que lo satisfaciera? Eso no se pone en duda, está clarísimo como el agua. Me alegra que él mismo lo reconozca.
"Para caber dentro de las mentes humanas, los conceptos tenían que encogerse mucho."
Matthew Lynch es el pequeño y todos lo quieren, incluyéndome. Desde la saga principal hasta los primeros libros de esta trilogía, Matthew era el único que no había hecho nada; si no fuera porque su creador lo hizo con la habilidad de caerle bien a todo el mundo, quizá no habría sobrevivido a la sociedad, ya que tiene un carácter sumiso y una inocencia peligrosa. Para Declan, controlar cada aspecto de la vida de Matthew era la única manera de mantenerlo a salvo, pero en este libro cruza la línea y Matthew finalmente se revela. A mí me hizo sentir muy orgullosa su acto de rebeldía, aunque hubiera deseado que en el epílogo se nos diera más información respecto a qué hará en el futuro, ya que tal parece que sigue siendo el heredero de Declan y eso me hace preguntarme si lograron romper la relación fraternal tan tóxica que llevaban. Matthew no es esencial para la trama principal, pero es el lado bueno de la familia Lynch, por lo que resulta sencillo comprender por qué Declan quiere protegerlo de todo y por qué Ronan nunca pudo renunciar a él.
Y ahí termina la lista de hermanos Lynch, pero en el libro hay otros personajes importantes: Jordan, Hennessy y Carmen.
Yo ya había dicho que sentía que Jordan solo estaba allí para ser "la persona especial" de Declan y en este libro comprobé que tenía razón, la muchacha pasó de ser un personaje más o menos interesante a ser la novia que espera en casa y con ello me hizo sentir que perdí gran parte de mi tiempo leyendo sus puntos de vista.
Hennessy y Carmen evolucionaron bien, tuvieron más protagonismo del que en un principio parecía y son buenos personajes individuales, lo que agradezco. Me gustó tanto la evolución de Hennessy que, si llegara a haber un spin-off de ella (hey, lo dudo), lo leería. Es mi crush literario más fuerte del momento.
Ah, el probrecito de Adam sigue siendo muy secundario. Me da pena, creo que podría ser un personaje inolvidable si no lo dejaran siempre atrás (? Cuando empecé esta trilogía una de las razones principales era que quería ver drama entre Ronan y él, pero actualmente no me encanta la pareja que conforman, de hecho llegué a pensar que sería mejor si Ronan conoce a alguien más, pero sí siento injusto que Adam no sobresalga pese a que tiene potencial.
"—Sé peligroso —susurró."
En resumen, mi yo de hace unos años habría llorado por todas las escenas dramáticas entre hermanos que tiene este libro y le habría dado cinco estrellas por el final tan rosita, pero hoy en día solo puedo pensar en que la autora es una listilla: es buena haciendo creer al lector que pasará una cosa y al final la cambia o la transforma en algo completamente inesperado. Me quedo con Ronan Apocalíptico, mi personaje favorito, y Hennessy, que se echa unas frases dignas de Instagram. Es un buen libro juvenil porque te obliga a recordar detalles minúsculos para entender las cosas que van pasando y que un autor logre que tantas cosas tengan sentido al unirlas no es tan sencillo como parece. No le doy cinco estrellas porque soy de la opinión que cuando el contexto es una amenaza mundial, no es realista que todos sobrevivan y, además, se me hizo un poquito denso.
Ha sido una experiencia agradable seguir a Ronan desde el comienzo de todo y me despido de este universo sabiendo que me acompañó por muchas de las etapas más horribles de mi vida:)
October 18, 2022
something so beautiful, so precious, so dear to me. ronan lynch i will always love you, you're my treasure (adam also loves you).
can't believe it's the end, i just can't believe.
can't believe it's the end, i just can't believe.
December 3, 2022
*1.5*
This book is like if you wrote a book about the people who, when faced with a genie that offered you three wishes, asked for more wishes.
God, this book was dreadful. I couldn't make sense of it and it was honestly a very exhausting reading experience. I had so much to say about it when I was reading it, but now that I'm finished, I never want to think about it ever again. I'm completely devastated that my favourite series ever ended like this, and I'm sorry if that makes me sound really entitled. Lots of people loved it. I didn't. I never want to read another book ever again.
The plot was meandering and had no goal or direction, the characters were different to how they were previously characterised, plots and rules that had been established many books ago were just disregarded entirely, and everything was so rushed, not to mention all of the ridiculous flashbacks... I don't know why this book is the way it is. Why there's so many POVs and plotline attempts and 'character arcs'... it's the final book in a massive universe. It's the time for wrapping things up, not introducing new ones. ESPECIALLY not introducing new things that disregard previous canon. 'Big reveals' only work when there's some kind of foreshadowing... this felt like plot twists for shock factor only. And the characters were so stagnant! Nothing happening! No thoughts!!!!!!!! I'm genuinely so upset lol.
Not even Stiefvater's writing style that I loved so much could save it- on the contrary, the lack of substance in the novel made the writing repetitive and dull with nothing to drive it.
I'm honestly in shock at this. I don't really know what else to say. The only reason it isn't one single star is because it wasn't downright offensive. I think this will upset me for a while I fear.
This book is like if you wrote a book about the people who, when faced with a genie that offered you three wishes, asked for more wishes.
God, this book was dreadful. I couldn't make sense of it and it was honestly a very exhausting reading experience. I had so much to say about it when I was reading it, but now that I'm finished, I never want to think about it ever again. I'm completely devastated that my favourite series ever ended like this, and I'm sorry if that makes me sound really entitled. Lots of people loved it. I didn't. I never want to read another book ever again.
The plot was meandering and had no goal or direction, the characters were different to how they were previously characterised, plots and rules that had been established many books ago were just disregarded entirely, and everything was so rushed, not to mention all of the ridiculous flashbacks... I don't know why this book is the way it is. Why there's so many POVs and plotline attempts and 'character arcs'... it's the final book in a massive universe. It's the time for wrapping things up, not introducing new ones. ESPECIALLY not introducing new things that disregard previous canon. 'Big reveals' only work when there's some kind of foreshadowing... this felt like plot twists for shock factor only. And the characters were so stagnant! Nothing happening! No thoughts!!!!!!!! I'm genuinely so upset lol.
Not even Stiefvater's writing style that I loved so much could save it- on the contrary, the lack of substance in the novel made the writing repetitive and dull with nothing to drive it.
I'm honestly in shock at this. I don't really know what else to say. The only reason it isn't one single star is because it wasn't downright offensive. I think this will upset me for a while I fear.
October 22, 2022
3,5/5
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
I wrote a lengthy review about Mister Impossible one and a half years ago. It feels like that happened yesterday and I’m getting deja vu, but things are different.
Don’t get me wrong. I still liked the book. A lot, actually. One moment made me cry. Another made me claw at my face and jump around.
But it all still feels underwhelming.
I miss when I was completely overwhelmed with Call Down The Hawk and Mister Impossible. Desperation, awe, amazement, etc etc. Those two made me feel like I was going insane. This one didn’t. And it was supposed to make me go insane the most. It’s the conclusion to the world I’ve been a part of since I was 15, the conclusion to the world I’ve been losing myself in for years and years and years, the conclusion to the world I’ve come to love more than a lot of real world things.
And it feels dry. It feels like Maggie was so eager to put an end to it, that she forgot to fill it with the same feelings she poured into the previous two books. The previous series.
Alright. Enough with my ranting. Let’s get into the actual review. Spoilers ahead, be warned.
The writing. As usual, the writing is amazing. Not as amazing as the previous two books, but still. There are some lines here and there that made me hold my breath. Quotes from Nathan’s journal are the perfect example of good writing.
The plot. It’s actually pretty dense. A lot of things happen in a span of only a few pages. I didn’t feel like it was rushed, it was pretty well paced. The plot in this book feels more important than character development, which I find… unsatisfactory. I’m a character development person who enjoys plot-driven stuff as well, but I can’t help but remember how Mister Impossible was so perfectly character driven, while also not losing in plot aspects as well.
Are you tired of me comparing them yet?
The characters. I’m going to start with Adam Parrish, because frankly, I can’t stop thinking about him and his monologue in chapter 12. His words keep haunting me.
I died a little when I read that chapter. I didn’t expect him to blurt out a monologue that lasts for pages when he’s barely had lines here and there in the first two books, but I’m certainly not complaining. To me, this monologue is the highlight of this book, the moment I can’t stop thinking about. When he took off the gifted watch and said goodbye to Ronan just a few chapters before, I had this horrible, horrible feeling in my chest that made me freeze and made me want to close the book and never open it again. But I powered through and I was rewarded by chapter 19, their reunion in the sweetmetal sea, that is one of the key moments of the book and one of the key moments of my life. I was melting and melting. Adam realizing Ronan is a “weakness” to his future, Adam trying to talk himself out of it, but he realizes he’s failed every time he sees Ronan again, because he’s in love with him and he doesn’t know what that means to his future but he wants to live in the moment with Ronan. I melted some more. Their proposal in the epilogue that doesn’t require any words because they’ve shared thoughts. I’m a puddle. Can’t forget mentioning the terrific parallel of Ronan’s childhood dream about being dead, about boyish fingers lacing through his own and telling him, Numquam solus. Never alone. And how Ronan prayed Please to God when he saw Adam’s hands for the first time. Please be the boy from my dreams.
Maybe I dreamt you.
Jordan. There wasn’t enough of her in this book. Not enough of her pov chapters, not enough of her personality, her paintings, her relationship with Declan. She’s supposed to be one of the main characters, yet she felt like a side character who we saw once in a while when it was convenient. Her development isn’t much since the previous book, where she finally realized she’s a separate person from Hennessy and she doesn’t want to live her life like Hennessy does. This book mainly focuses on her complicated relationship with her maker and if she wants her in her life. The conversation between Jordan and Hennessy made me so emotional I actually cried a little.
And there wasn’t enough resolution after this, I’m afraid. They don’t get in touch for the entire book, and then, right at the very end, they hug. And that’s it. I expected a lot more.
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
Hennessy. There was a lot of her in this, and I loved it all. She’s one of my favorite characters of all time, and seeing her be miserable all the time did things to me, so now that she’s realizing how powerful she is, how strong she is, it's doing things to me again. Her catching up on the years of sleep deprivation, cutting through The Lace, making sweetmetals and helping other people with her art makes me feel awesome.
Matthew Lynch. There wasn’t enough of his character development, either. We already know he’s in a rebellious phase because he found out he’s a dream. My favorite moments, though, are him punching Declan because he deserves it, and his interactions with Bryde. Two of Ronan’s dreams, starkly different, one filled with happiness and light and the other - grim and dark, trying to find optimism that can’t be found in this state of the world.
I expected more of him, especially when he’s supposed to be dead twice and we don’t even find out how he survived the second time. Well.
Carmen Farooq-Lane. I can’t bring myself to care about her. I just can’t. I liked her a little more when she found out the truth from the Moderators and went a little wild, becoming a little like the portrait Hennessy painted, but that’s all. She’s just… there. Existing. Important, sure, but not enough for me to care about. I’d say the same about Liliana and their relationship. Liliana sacrificing herself was also pretty underwhelming.
Nathan Farooq-Lane. I remember spending two books wishing Nathan was alive and that he became the actual villain of the series, and I got my wish. It just came out... wrong. There’s very little Nathan in this book, when I wished we got so much more. He’s fascinating to me. A psychopath serial killer, murdering his parents, creating groups of people to kill people like himself, wanting to end the world. His bombs are a lot like Kavinsky’s fire dragon in The Dream Thieves. It feels like he came out of nowhere. And it makes me wish he stayed dead and Ronan was the antagonist, like we thought he'd be in Mister Impossible. Alas, if only we had more of the psychopathy.
Bryde. I never liked him, but shockingly, he was likable in this one. Made me feel sorry for him. I didn’t exactly understand what happened to him in the end, is he dead? Is he alive? Did he turn back into his dream form? I don’t know. Yet another thing left ambiguous.
Declan Lynch. The star of this book. The one with the best character development, with the most pov’s, the most action. Maggie said she wrote a compelling Declan book, and I agree. I can’t say I love him, but I like him a lot. He fucks up, he heals, he wishes he was asleep instead of Ronan, he tries everything to save his brothers.
I think this is one of the best quotes from the book. Him going all John Wick in the Fairy Market was so badass, so messy, so unexpected, that I didn’t believe what I was reading.
The most unexpected thing, though, is him forgiving his father and admitting he never hated him, he just missed him all along. I really didn’t expect Niall Lynch getting a goddamn redemption arc. I can’t really bring myself to care about Niall himself, I just care about Declan and I’m glad he’s healed. Him letting go of the moth Niall gave him almost made me cry. I reread that snippet over and over and over again, feeling complicated emotions each time.
Ronan Lynch.
So.
How do we feel about the Ley Theory coming true?
Clap, clap. I can’t actually believe the fandom pulled it off, but here it is. The Greywaren. Ronan. Ronan Lynch. The fictional love of my life. The main protagonist that started and ended everything but was treated like a side piece the whole book and used only when he was convenient, asleep the rest of the time. The character who had the best development in Mister Impossible. The character who was perfectly fucked up, invincible, unstoppable, lovable and hateable in The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer Trilogy, until Greywaren. The character who was wronged. The character I miss with my whole being. The character I’m not going to get more of, ever.
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
How do I feel about my favorite character of all time, my comfort character, the character I project all my feelings onto, being a disappointment in the final, conclusive part of it all, when everything was supposed to be because of him, about him, for him?
I’m tired. I’m really, really tired.
Well, at least the graphic novel’s coming out in 2025 and I have something to look forward to. I’ll experience everything from the start.
This review makes me feel exactly like the book did: underwhelmed. And so, so tired.
Peace out.
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
I wrote a lengthy review about Mister Impossible one and a half years ago. It feels like that happened yesterday and I’m getting deja vu, but things are different.
Don’t get me wrong. I still liked the book. A lot, actually. One moment made me cry. Another made me claw at my face and jump around.
But it all still feels underwhelming.
I miss when I was completely overwhelmed with Call Down The Hawk and Mister Impossible. Desperation, awe, amazement, etc etc. Those two made me feel like I was going insane. This one didn’t. And it was supposed to make me go insane the most. It’s the conclusion to the world I’ve been a part of since I was 15, the conclusion to the world I’ve been losing myself in for years and years and years, the conclusion to the world I’ve come to love more than a lot of real world things.
And it feels dry. It feels like Maggie was so eager to put an end to it, that she forgot to fill it with the same feelings she poured into the previous two books. The previous series.
Alright. Enough with my ranting. Let’s get into the actual review. Spoilers ahead, be warned.
The writing. As usual, the writing is amazing. Not as amazing as the previous two books, but still. There are some lines here and there that made me hold my breath. Quotes from Nathan’s journal are the perfect example of good writing.
Everyone wants to be powerful.. Ads tell every consumer: We are important and seen.. Teachers tell every student: I believe in you.. Embrace your power.. Be your best self.. You can have it all.. These are lies.. Power is like gasoline and salt.. It seems plentiful but there is only so much to go around.. Sharp blades want power to gain room to cut.. Dull blades want power so sharp blades will not cut them..
The plot. It’s actually pretty dense. A lot of things happen in a span of only a few pages. I didn’t feel like it was rushed, it was pretty well paced. The plot in this book feels more important than character development, which I find… unsatisfactory. I’m a character development person who enjoys plot-driven stuff as well, but I can’t help but remember how Mister Impossible was so perfectly character driven, while also not losing in plot aspects as well.
Are you tired of me comparing them yet?
The characters. I’m going to start with Adam Parrish, because frankly, I can’t stop thinking about him and his monologue in chapter 12. His words keep haunting me.
”That copy exists. I made him. I am him. There’s a real version of me that stayed with you, I guess, that went out to Lindenmere every day and just learned everything he could about the ley line, about the something else. ”...” But this Adam killed those Adams so this one could win, this one who came to Harvard to go to class and write papers and buy waffles with the Crying Club and pretend like nothing bad ever happened to him and like he has all the answers. “...” I lie to all of them. “...” It’s like I can’t stop.”
I died a little when I read that chapter. I didn’t expect him to blurt out a monologue that lasts for pages when he’s barely had lines here and there in the first two books, but I’m certainly not complaining. To me, this monologue is the highlight of this book, the moment I can’t stop thinking about. When he took off the gifted watch and said goodbye to Ronan just a few chapters before, I had this horrible, horrible feeling in my chest that made me freeze and made me want to close the book and never open it again. But I powered through and I was rewarded by chapter 19, their reunion in the sweetmetal sea, that is one of the key moments of the book and one of the key moments of my life. I was melting and melting. Adam realizing Ronan is a “weakness” to his future, Adam trying to talk himself out of it, but he realizes he’s failed every time he sees Ronan again, because he’s in love with him and he doesn’t know what that means to his future but he wants to live in the moment with Ronan. I melted some more. Their proposal in the epilogue that doesn’t require any words because they’ve shared thoughts. I’m a puddle. Can’t forget mentioning the terrific parallel of Ronan’s childhood dream about being dead, about boyish fingers lacing through his own and telling him, Numquam solus. Never alone. And how Ronan prayed Please to God when he saw Adam’s hands for the first time. Please be the boy from my dreams.
Maybe I dreamt you.
Jordan. There wasn’t enough of her in this book. Not enough of her pov chapters, not enough of her personality, her paintings, her relationship with Declan. She’s supposed to be one of the main characters, yet she felt like a side character who we saw once in a while when it was convenient. Her development isn’t much since the previous book, where she finally realized she’s a separate person from Hennessy and she doesn’t want to live her life like Hennessy does. This book mainly focuses on her complicated relationship with her maker and if she wants her in her life. The conversation between Jordan and Hennessy made me so emotional I actually cried a little.
“You think you spared me the memories of Jay because you hated her, but you know what I think? Deep down, you didn’t give me your memories of Jay because you didn’t want me to know that you were a lot like her.”
“I don’t need you anymore, Hennessy, but I thought I might want you. I was wrong. You’re ugly and you make everything you touch ugly. It’s over.”
And there wasn’t enough resolution after this, I’m afraid. They don’t get in touch for the entire book, and then, right at the very end, they hug. And that’s it. I expected a lot more.
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
Hennessy. There was a lot of her in this, and I loved it all. She’s one of my favorite characters of all time, and seeing her be miserable all the time did things to me, so now that she’s realizing how powerful she is, how strong she is, it's doing things to me again. Her catching up on the years of sleep deprivation, cutting through The Lace, making sweetmetals and helping other people with her art makes me feel awesome.
As her eyes burned, Hennessy swiped a thin, bleeding splash of red on one of the index cards, and then, with the marker, suggested the lines needed to show that it was an anatomical heart, bleeding paint. Beneath it, she just had time to jot angrily: OF FUCKING COURSE.
Her heart was broken, that was why she was really upset, her heart was broken, broken, broken because Hennessy wanted so badly to be as good at living as Jordan was and she never even got close.
Matthew Lynch. There wasn’t enough of his character development, either. We already know he’s in a rebellious phase because he found out he’s a dream. My favorite moments, though, are him punching Declan because he deserves it, and his interactions with Bryde. Two of Ronan’s dreams, starkly different, one filled with happiness and light and the other - grim and dark, trying to find optimism that can’t be found in this state of the world.
“Dudifer, you are the saddest dude I have ever met,” Matthew told him. “It’s like you’re always wet. Seems to me that if I had to learn to be sad, you have to learn to be happy. Why don’t you draw a, I dunno, chinchilla or something, instead of that, uh, thing. Not that it's not good.”
“What’s a chinchilla?”
“You’re sort of a funny person,” Matthew told him. “You know a lot of
stuff but you’re also pretty stupid.”
I expected more of him, especially when he’s supposed to be dead twice and we don’t even find out how he survived the second time. Well.
Carmen Farooq-Lane. I can’t bring myself to care about her. I just can’t. I liked her a little more when she found out the truth from the Moderators and went a little wild, becoming a little like the portrait Hennessy painted, but that’s all. She’s just… there. Existing. Important, sure, but not enough for me to care about. I’d say the same about Liliana and their relationship. Liliana sacrificing herself was also pretty underwhelming.
Nathan Farooq-Lane. I remember spending two books wishing Nathan was alive and that he became the actual villain of the series, and I got my wish. It just came out... wrong. There’s very little Nathan in this book, when I wished we got so much more. He’s fascinating to me. A psychopath serial killer, murdering his parents, creating groups of people to kill people like himself, wanting to end the world. His bombs are a lot like Kavinsky’s fire dragon in The Dream Thieves. It feels like he came out of nowhere. And it makes me wish he stayed dead and Ronan was the antagonist, like we thought he'd be in Mister Impossible. Alas, if only we had more of the psychopathy.
Bryde. I never liked him, but shockingly, he was likable in this one. Made me feel sorry for him. I didn’t exactly understand what happened to him in the end, is he dead? Is he alive? Did he turn back into his dream form? I don’t know. Yet another thing left ambiguous.
Declan Lynch. The star of this book. The one with the best character development, with the most pov’s, the most action. Maggie said she wrote a compelling Declan book, and I agree. I can’t say I love him, but I like him a lot. He fucks up, he heals, he wishes he was asleep instead of Ronan, he tries everything to save his brothers.
“It was always going to be this way,” he said blandly. “Jordan, it was always going to be this way. Our story was always a tragedy.”
“Pozzi, it wasn’t,” she said.
“Not yours,” Declan said. “The Lynch family’s. The Lynch brothers’. It was written before I was born.”
“Mine was, too. I rewrote it. I saw the angel in the marble—”
“—and carved until you set it free,” Declan finished the Michelangelo
quote for her. “Yes, you did, Jordan.”
But he was still trapped in stone.
I think this is one of the best quotes from the book. Him going all John Wick in the Fairy Market was so badass, so messy, so unexpected, that I didn’t believe what I was reading.
The most unexpected thing, though, is him forgiving his father and admitting he never hated him, he just missed him all along. I really didn’t expect Niall Lynch getting a goddamn redemption arc. I can’t really bring myself to care about Niall himself, I just care about Declan and I’m glad he’s healed. Him letting go of the moth Niall gave him almost made me cry. I reread that snippet over and over and over again, feeling complicated emotions each time.
Ronan Lynch.
So.
How do we feel about the Ley Theory coming true?
Clap, clap. I can’t actually believe the fandom pulled it off, but here it is. The Greywaren. Ronan. Ronan Lynch. The fictional love of my life. The main protagonist that started and ended everything but was treated like a side piece the whole book and used only when he was convenient, asleep the rest of the time. The character who had the best development in Mister Impossible. The character who was perfectly fucked up, invincible, unstoppable, lovable and hateable in The Raven Cycle and The Dreamer Trilogy, until Greywaren. The character who was wronged. The character I miss with my whole being. The character I’m not going to get more of, ever.
Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.
How do I feel about my favorite character of all time, my comfort character, the character I project all my feelings onto, being a disappointment in the final, conclusive part of it all, when everything was supposed to be because of him, about him, for him?
I’m tired. I’m really, really tired.
Well, at least the graphic novel’s coming out in 2025 and I have something to look forward to. I’ll experience everything from the start.
This review makes me feel exactly like the book did: underwhelmed. And so, so tired.
Peace out.
October 26, 2025
«It was all very good.»
هيچکس هیچکس هیچکس هیچکس نمیتونه درک کنه من چقدر عاشق این دنیای جادویی و قشنگ هستم.
یادمه پارسال بهار وقتی تعطیلات داشتم مجموعه ی اصلی رو تو تقریبا ده روز خوندم و عاشق تک تک شخصیتهای پیچیده و دوستداشتنیش و همچنین داستان قشنگ و جذابشون شدم. وقتی فهمیدم رونن یه مجموعه ی سیکوئل داره تصمیم گرفتم یه سال صبر کنم و تابستون امسال بخونمش. And that's exactly what I did.
این مجموعه درباره ی برادرهای لینچئه، درباره ی والدین لینچ، درباره ی ادام پریش، درباره ی جوردن، هنسی، و جوردن هنسی، درباره ی براید، درباره ی کارمن و لیلیانا. این مجموعه درباره ی کسایی که رویا میبینن و کسایی که رویا هستن هست، و درباره ی رابطه ی غمگین و زیباشون. این مجموعه درباره ی انتخاب بین واقعیت و رویاست. این مجموعه درباره ی برادرهای لینچئه :)
خداحافظی کردن با این دنیا خیلی خیلی سخته، ولی میدونم که دوباره میام سراغشون so goodbye until next time.
I had the best time with you😭❤️
هيچکس هیچکس هیچکس هیچکس نمیتونه درک کنه من چقدر عاشق این دنیای جادویی و قشنگ هستم.
یادمه پارسال بهار وقتی تعطیلات داشتم مجموعه ی اصلی رو تو تقریبا ده روز خوندم و عاشق تک تک شخصیتهای پیچیده و دوستداشتنیش و همچنین داستان قشنگ و جذابشون شدم. وقتی فهمیدم رونن یه مجموعه ی سیکوئل داره تصمیم گرفتم یه سال صبر کنم و تابستون امسال بخونمش. And that's exactly what I did.
این مجموعه درباره ی برادرهای لینچئه، درباره ی والدین لینچ، درباره ی ادام پریش، درباره ی جوردن، هنسی، و جوردن هنسی، درباره ی براید، درباره ی کارمن و لیلیانا. این مجموعه درباره ی کسایی که رویا میبینن و کسایی که رویا هستن هست، و درباره ی رابطه ی غمگین و زیباشون. این مجموعه درباره ی انتخاب بین واقعیت و رویاست. این مجموعه درباره ی برادرهای لینچئه :)
خداحافظی کردن با این دنیا خیلی خیلی سخته، ولی میدونم که دوباره میام سراغشون so goodbye until next time.
I had the best time with you😭❤️
Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,694 reviews