Review - The Dream Thieves

The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2)
by Maggie Stiefvater
Date: 2013
Publisher: Scholastic
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 360
Format: e-book
Source: library

Now that the ley lines around Cabeswater have been woken, nothing for Ronan, Gansey, Blue, and Adam will be the same. Ronan, for one, is falling more and more deeply into his dreams, and his dreams are intruding more and more into waking life. Meanwhile, some very sinister people are looking for some of the same pieces of the Cabeswater puzzle that Gansey is after...

(synopsis from Goodreads)

This is the second installment in The Raven Cycle.  After finishing the first book, I sort of wanted to keep reading.  After finishing the second book, I sort of don't.  Can someone just let me know if Gansey bites the dust in the end?  (I jest, of course.  I hate spoilers as much as the next reader!)

Reading this book was a weird experience.  It was almost like the opposite of déjà vu.  I couldn't remember half of what went on in The Raven Boys, so continued references to events from that book just had me confused.  In addition to that, there were references within The Dream Thieves to events that had previously occurred in that very book... and it was like I hadn't read them at all.  I'm not sure if it's because of the style of writing in the book; it's technically sound and quite pretty, but it's also rather detached because it's multiple third-person limited-omnicient... so we bounce around between most of the characters and nearly get literary whiplash.  I almost wish that Stiefvater had limited herself to one character point of view per book... but then, I'm not sure she could have told this particular story, since it's so complex.

It also seemed like I was reading about entirely different characters than those in the first book.  I don't remember Blue being so annoying in The Raven Boys, or Gansey so childish, or Adam so mean.  Ronan was different, too, though in a better way (since I really disliked him in the first book and now I only sort of dislike him).

Overall, the impression I got from reading this book was that it was an exercise in character building.  The story is complex, but the pacing is slow for much of the book, which makes it seem like there isn't much of a plot.  Like The Raven Boys, the story is pretty heavily weighted toward the back end; in fact, I almost gave up numerous times throughout the first quarter of the book.  But I kept going and stuff started happening and then the action stopped just as we're hit with a shocking revelation that will be relevant in the next book.  I think I'm seeing a pattern here...

I was not terribly impressed with The Dream Thieves as far as the story went.  It seemed like a lot of stuff happened, complete with convenient contrivances and mentions of so many characters I could never keep them all straight (who the heck is Jimi?).  However, Maggie Stiefvater is a decent writer and when I'm reading one of her books I can usually let the snarky little editor in my head put down her red pen and take a nap.  Sometimes things do get a little overly wordy, but at least there's no incorrect grammar to make me want to tear the book into tiny little shreds.

Despite what I said before, I might keep reading this series... if I can manage to remember what happened in The Dream Thieves by the time Blue Lily, Lily Blue is released.  The books aren't particularly bad, especially if you don't mind a leisurely pace and a story that takes many installments to tell.  At the moment, though, I'm craving something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end that doesn't require thousands of pages and years of waiting to get through!

Plot: 2/5
Characters: 3/5
Pace: 2/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 5/5
Originality: 3/5
Enjoyment: 2/5

Overall: 3 out of 5

Review - The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1)
by Maggie Stiefvater
Date: 2012
Publisher: Scholastic
Reading level: YA
Book type: prose novel
Pages: 416
Format: e-book
Source: Amazon

"There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love... or you killed him."

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive.

Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

From Maggie Stiefvater, the bestselling and acclaimed author of the Shiver trilogy and The Scorpio Races, comes a spellbinding new series where the inevitability of death and the nature of love lead us to a place we’ve never been before.

(synopsis from Goodreads)

I am completely exhausted after reading this book.  When you go into a novel and find out fairly quickly that one of the main characters is doomed by a prophecy, it's difficult not to read every scene after that with a certain sense of trepidation.  I anticipated that I would, at some point, be on my knees with the book held aloft, shouting, "Why, Stiefvater?  Why?!"  Okay, not really.  But I felt like that might be a distinct possibility... until the point where I glanced at my Kindle app's progress bar and saw that it was at 99%.  This was a great 416-page lead-in for a sequel, I'll give the author that.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy myself before the story abruptly, unsatisfyingly ended.  The plot and the promise of the plot were interesting and unique.  But what I really enjoyed were the characters, particularly the boys.  The novel switches points of view from chapter to chapter.  We get to see through the eyes of Blue, Gansey, Adam, and Whelk (the boys' Latin teacher), and through them, we also get to know Ronan and Noah and the psychic women in Blue's life.  Unfortunately, I found just about every character more interesting and well developed than Blue.  I'm not sure if that was intentional or not; in the story, she acts as an amplifier for the psychic women's gifts.  For me, she seemed that way in the narrative as well, only serving as a sounding board or a piece of scenery that doesn't do much except support everything around it.  If Blue's point of view had been the only one we'd seen, it would have been very disappointing.  Luckily, we got to experience parts of the story through other eyes as well.  My favourite character was probably Gansey, who was nothing like I expected.  While it could be argued that Ronan and Adam were a bit stereotypical in their roles (alcohol-loving Irish scrapper and downtrodden abused kid, respectively), Gansey was something else altogether.  I appreciated the fact that he was different, and that he tried so hard to find something to believe in.

The only other book I've read by this author was Shiver, so I knew I could count on some fairly solid writing here.  I wasn't disappointed until near the end, when a bunch of what I assume were typos started to creep in (though one never knows if it's just something unique to the Kindle edition).  I was, however, quite confounded by the very last sentence of the book.  It made no sense to me, and I'm not sure if it was supposed to be some really obscure reference to something that's going to happen in the second book, or if my copy is plagued by a syntax-impaired typographical error.

As much as I enjoyed the journey, breathless as I was for most of it, I'm kind of hesitant to read the next book in the series for fear that I'll run into more of the same problems that plagued this story.  I didn't find that much got resolved in the way of the plot.  So many loose ends were left hanging and the foreshadowing went kaput, so that it almost doesn't feel like I finished a book at all; it feels like I merely finished a chapter.

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Pace: 3/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 3/5
Originality: 5/5
Enjoyment: 3/5

Overall: 3.71 out of 5

Review - Shiver

Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #1)
by Maggie Stiefvater
Date: 2009
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Reading level: YA
Pages: 400
Source: Chapters

Grace has been watching the wolves for years, ever since she was almost killed in an attack. She feels especially drawn to the wolf with the yellow eyes. One night, a yellow-eyed boy shows up, bleeding, on her back porch. Grace knows right away that it is her wolf.

When a classmate goes missing and is assumed killed by the wolves, Grace discovers that there has been a lot more going on in the woods around town than she could have dreamed. As her feelings for her yellow-eyed boy, Sam, grow stronger, she is forced to confront some troubling possibilities. And those possibilities could have dire consequences for those she holds most dear.

When I read a book that's had lots of hype, I'm always a little bit wary. Will it live up to my expectations? Or will I end up tossing it aside, wondering what all the fuss was about? I've had Shiver in my TBR pile since Halloween 2009... and I only just got around to reading it now! I'm glad I was pleasantly surprised by what I read.

While this is essentially another paranormal romance (it's a werewolf book), the author did some interesting things with the mythology. There are no full moons, silver crosses, or wolfsbane in this rendition of the tale. I quite enjoyed this variation, as the author was able to make it fairly original (and that's not easy to do with all the paranormal titles on the market).

The story is told in alternating first-person points of view, so we get to see the story through Grace's and Sam's eyes. To be honest, I wasn't a huge fan of this technique in this book because I found it a bit confusing. Sam's character seemed consistent, whether he was the storyteller or the subject. Grace, on the other hand, didn't work as well for me. I felt like her character was a bit different when she was telling the story as opposed to when she was being described by Sam. My other complaint with the characters in this novel was with the parents. Why were they all so uninvolved? I don't think I've ever read anything like it. While this sort of characterization may be convenient for the plot, I found it to be very unrealistic. One set of lousy parents, sure... But it seemed like every parent in Mercy Falls couldn't care less what their children were up to!

The book was a page-turner, though, and I had a difficult time putting it down at times. I did like the writing style (descriptive without being overly flowery) and the author knew how to write dialogue properly.

So, all in all, I can see now what all the fuss was about, and I'm glad I dug this one out of the bottom of my TBR pile to read it. Unfortunately, now I need to get my hands on Linger and Forever. Darn addictive trilogies...

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Pace: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Editing: 5/5
Originality: 5/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Overall: 4.29 out of 5

Strange moments in the world of book blogging/marketing...

People really, really want to win a copy of Linger, don't they? When I had a look at my subs this morning, it looked like about a third of the posts were about Maggie Stiefvater's upcoming Linger (the sequel to Shiver). So I followed the provided links and discovered that all of these posts are basically just contest entries (post an ad, maybe win a book).

From a marketing perspective, this is pretty smart. You're getting publicity for your book all over the book blogosphere, and familiarizing readers with the cover so that, when it's released in stores, people will know what to look for. Giving people extra entries for using the book cover as their profile pic on social networking sites? Genius.

From a book blog reader's perspective, though, this is all kind of annoying. Hence my mixed feelings about this. I understand why it's being done, but that doesn't mean it's any less frustrating to sort through my subs to find something to read that isn't -- let's face it -- a form of spam.

I'm curious about how this might relate to the new FTC guidelines. After all, there is an advertising relationship here: people are being compensated (albeit with contest entries) in exchange for posting advertisements. That sounds awfully similar to the main issue that these guidelines were created to address:

... Engle said the revised guidelines are aimed at advertisers and marketers, not individual bloggers. She cited a Procter & Gamble campaign called “Vocalpoint,” which provided “400,000 moms” with free products in exchange for endorsements made via blog posts and tweets.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting jaded. It seems the publishing industry has gone from an industry that once provided a mouthpiece for genuinely talented storytellers into a money-focused industry that will publish just about anything as long as they think people will buy it. Perhaps it's always been that way, but I certainly don't remember reading as many bad books in the past as I've read lately. Typos, plot holes, questionable messages for the target audience... and that's not even taking into account the self-published stuff!

What do you think? Do you like contests that basically force you to become an advertiser? What about publishing today? Have you noticed a downward spiral as of late... or were things always this shoddy and avaricious in the publishing industry?