Greywaren

Greywaren Book Review by Maggie Stiefvater

This book is a fantastic disappointment. 

Of course, the book is good. Of course the writing is absolutely phenomenal. It’s Maggie Stiefvater. Even when I’ve questioned her plot or character development, I have never once questioned her writing. 

She is a wizard with words. Her writing floats off the page and lives rent-free in my head for months. The way she concocts her stories fills me with delight and awe. 

That was never in question. 

The biggest question I had going into Greywaren was: will I get what I want?

The answer is no. 

I think it’s mostly safe to say that a majority of readers saw the Dreamer trilogy as Ronan’s own triage of books. It was pitched that way to us as an audience and the way the books were presented was that it would be about the Brothers Lynch. 

This is a lie. 

Perhaps, Call Down the Hawk could be described as such, the first book in the trilogy, but every book since has fallen further and further away from the original premise. 

The second installment, Mister Impossible, was almost entirely about Declan. And now the final book, Greywaren, I would argue, is about Hennessy and Carmen Farooq-Lane. 

Now. I like Hennessy. I like Farooq-Lane. They’re great characters. 

However, they are not the Brothers Lynch. 

I don’t understand why authors do this. They promise things and entice readers with certain characters, plot points, and relationships, and then don’t deliver. 

I’m sure Maggie has her reasons for writing the trilogy this way, and I’m not pretending to know what they are or that I understand the intricacies of her writing process or the publishing world, but I am just so frustrated that she wrote the trilogy this way. 

Ronan, the so-called main character, is hardly in Greywaren at all, and half of the time when he does have his own chapters, he is either asleep, dreaming, or not taking part in reality. The amount of exasperation I have that Maggie made this choice is overwhelming to me as a reader. 

In the original The Raven Cycle books, Ronan and Adam were my favorites. They were many people’s favorites, including, it seems, Maggie herself. Which is why she set out on a quest to tell Ronan’s own story.

 Except what started as Ronan’s narrative quickly devolved into a tale featuring so many other characters that Ronan’s part became so diluted that it is barely there at all. 

Once again, I love Maggie’s characters. Jordan, Hennessy, Farooq-Lane, etc, they’re all wonderful. If Maggie had them as side characters in the Dreamer trilogy and then set out to write a spin-off series featuring them, I would not be mad. I would be super excited and pumped to read such a cool installment. 

But that’s not what I wanted, what I anticipated, or what I got. 

Instead, the final book about Ronan Lynch and his brothers is really about unrelated side characters who somehow took center stage despite everyone wanting the opposite. 

Irksome doesn’t even scratch the surface of it. 

Greywaren itself is…fine. As I said above, Maggie’s writing is undeniably beautiful. I will say, though, the plot gets convoluted and hard to follow and the ending feels rushed and shallow. 

This book essentially picks up after Mister Impossible, in which Ronan is asleep, along with many other dreamers or dreamt people who need sweetmetals. 

Declan is trying to save everyone, Matthew goes through a rebellious stage, Hennessy is creating, and Farooq-Lane is trying to stop her brother, Nathan, from starting the apocalypse. 

Honestly, when I think about it, this book simultaneously has so much going on and nothing going on at the same time. The overarching plot could be described as: Nathan is bringing on the apocalypse and people try to stop him as well as reawaken their sleeping friends. That’s it. That’s the plot. 

However, it takes 300+ pages to get to the end, which then rushes through really essential reunions and revelations, because there are so many characters we have to switch POV’s between. 

Additionally, there’s a lot of abstract things happening that don’t really contribute to the plot, even if they're interesting to read about. 

Overall, this means you could read 100 pages and have a very minimal amount of progress because everyone is taking one small step instead of having one character (Ronan) taking many. 

Jordan is hardly in this book, and Matthew, whom I anticipated seeing a lot of, is very cruelly shafted by having a sparse amount of chapters and a character arc that feels vague and incomplete.

 After running away towards the beginning of the book, no real headway comes from it and then in the end, bam! Matthew returns to the Barns like nothing happened. 

We don’t see the conversation between Matthew and Declan, we don’t see the reunion between Matthew and Ronan, and we certainly don’t get a scene with all three brothers, which, if you remember, is what this whole trilogy was supposed to be about. 

In the same vein, Adam and Ronan, the couple everyone was most excited to see and read about, had a few paltry scenes in this whole trilogy combined. There are more scenes with Farooq-Lane and Liliana than there are with arguably, the main couple. 

The injustice of this vexes me beyond words. 

Even in this book, at the very end, the reunion between Adam and Ronan that we waded through 300 pages to see, is brief and from someone else’s POV. 

What on earth? Really? This is the reunion we waited years for and we didn’t even get to experience it though Ronan’s own eyes. 

As I write this, I realize that I feel cheated and shafted. 

At this same time, I don’t know how fair it is to feel that way. It’s not my book or my characters, so who am I to demand anything of Maggie? I understand this. 

On the other hand, this was a book pitched to us and advertised as a series about the Brother’s Lynch. I would very much argue that by book three especially, this is completely unfounded and untrue. 

Did I still like the book? Yes, of course I did. However, I just wanted more. I wanted what was promised at the beginning. I wanted less abstract and confusing chapters and more chapters with essential characters actually talking, meeting, and growing. 

I wanted resolution, development, and conclusions. 

Instead, I got a muddled, albeit gorgeously written story, where all the characters felt full with potential, but never truly reached a point of promise. 

Like I said at the beginning, this book was both fantastic and a disappointment in so many ways, a fantastic disappointment that will always leave me wanting more. 

Recommendation: Read it. However, you’re not going to get the development or scenes that you want. Beware of this. Use fanfiction to fill in the gap that this trilogy wasn’t able to deliver on. 

Score: 6/10