This time, when he got up for that glass of water, the real glass, the waking glass, he was sure to marvel his fingertips over everything he passed, reminding himself of how specific waking reality was. [loc. 216]
Second in the trilogy that began with Call Down the Hawk. This review will inevitably contain spoilers for the previous book, but not for Mister Impossible itself.
Stiefvater writes a large cast of viewpoint characters, each with a distinctive voice and an arc of their own: Ronan and Hennessy, the dreamers, travelling with Bryde on a roadtrip to nowhere and trying to save dreamers as they go; Jordan and Declan, bonding over art and its functions; Carmen Farooq-Lane working with Liliana the Visionary; Adam Parrish at Harvard, scrying for something terrible; Matthew trying to come to terms with what he's learnt about himself. There is so much going on in this novel, so many threats and so many unanswered questions: it's a wonder it coheres, but it's hard (for me, at least) to focus on any one plot thread. I was intrigued by the ways in which art, and creativity, interact with dreams and dreamt beings. Stiefvater is very good at writing about the process of art, as well as the intricacies and currencies of the art world. (In part, this novel is a love letter to John Singer Sargent and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.) I'm saddened by Ronan's increasing isolation, and the ways in which he is very much not all right. I'm pleasantly surprised by two separate love stories, one heterosexual and one queer: and I'm actually starting to like Declan...
It's tempting to see elements of the novel as metaphors: the decline of the leylines mirroring the climate emergency, the isolation of dreamers and visionaries as a particular kind of disability or chronic illness. I think that does the novel, and the author, a disservice. Everything here is here for its own sake. The stakes here are higher than before, and the cliffhanger ending -- which I'm still making sense of -- will, I profoundly hope, be resolved in Greywaren, due 18th October ...
Fulfils the ‘set in the art world’ rubric of the 52 books in 2022 challenge.
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