Saturday, October 22, 2022

2022/136: Greywaren — Maggie Stiefvater

The world he had built with Ronan Lynch. A world of limitless emotions and limited power. A world of tilting green hillsides, purple mountains, agonizing crushes, euphoric grudges, gasoline nights, adventuring days, gravestones and ditches, kisses and orange juice, rain on skin, sun in eyes, easy pain, hard-won wonder. [loc. 3256]

Concluding the 'Dreamer' trilogy that began with Call Down the Hawk and continued in Mister Impossible. I am still assimilating, and will probably reread quite soon: in some ways Greywaren resolves or explains a great deal of what has gone before (not only in the Dreamer trilogy but in the Raven Cycle), but in others it left me vaguely unsatisfied.

At heart it's the story of the three Lynch brothers: Declan, who would like to be able to lead his own life; Ronan, who can manifest objects (and people) from dreams; and Matthew, who exists solely because of his brothers. It's also the story of their parents, Niall and Mór Ó Corra (nee Marie Curry); or possibly of the man calling himself 'the new Fenian' and the woman they all knew as Aurora. And it's the story of 'Jordan Hennessy', who is a dreamer and also a dream.

There are a lot of complex relationships in Greywaren, and a lot of transactional interactions. Adam gives Ronan back his watch (no, no, thinks Ronan, but is unable to speak); Liliana gives Carmen a revelation that explains the apocalyptic visions driving the Moderators; Bryde gives Declan's brothers back to him. Nobody comes out of this novel unchanged: everyone is transformed. And everyone, I think, loses something they thought was important.

I think I'll need to reread the trilogy as one long book -- which it surely is -- in order to understand all the nuances and twists. But I love Stiefvater's blend of profanity and profundity: I love the sense of a wider universe opening up, in the Forest and beyond: and I love the final scene, friends reunited, promises made, tranquility attainable.

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