#kelly lb greywaren

[snorlaxlovesme]

the most frustrating part of reading these books is that bc of the different twists that have occurred i feel like while i read them i’m trying to solve a mystery and but i don’t know what the mystery is nor do i know which clues to pay attention to or how far back to look for them. bc things in TRC *are* relevant in this series, but also not, but also ARE

like?? after Adam gives Declan the key to the hidey-hole where they are casually storing Ronan’s body:

“For some reason, a clear memory, unattached to anything else, returned to Ronan. A plain wooden mask, with round eye holes and a gaping mouth. It was not a horrific mask, but it felt horrific to look at nonetheless.” 

DO NOT BRING UP THE DREAMT MASK FROM TDT AND TRK IF YOU DON’T WANT ME TO GO INSANE, STIEF. The mask from Ronan’s dream that Adam put on AND RONAN RIPPED OFF HIS FACE?? Leaving behind only a grotesque skinless face?? And then the mask returning in TRK when Cabeswater was in ruin and everything was a nightmare and Declan slapping it on Matthew and tearing it off and leaving behind just lines and dashes instead of a face.

stop dropping these BOMBS on me and then just leaving me to sit wondering what i should take from this passage beside an intense emotional journey

[snorlaxlovesme]

Bryde and Matthew is the funniest fucking duo of this series. Imagine being the main antagonist (?) cult-leader weirdo of this whole series and you’re just trapped in a bottle episode with the most annoying child on the planet who just continuously rags on you for being depressed and stupid. i love it

[snorlaxlovesme]

i still don’t know how to feel about any of what’s happening but this:

He lifted his chin, and the anger bubbling in his eyes would have made anyone other than Nathan step back. “And you can speak to one of those things now?” Farooq-Lane asked faintly. “That can wake ley lines?” He said, “I am one of those things.”

is SO fucking raw

[snorlaxlovesme]

me and Ronan both at the beginning of chapter nine:

Even before he put a name to the face, he was overwhelmed with a single thought: It is going to be okay.

@stief: why did you do this,, to US????

[snorlaxlovesme]

not me crying because Declan traded and sold all the dreams he could get his hands on but kept ORBMASTER, the one gift from his brother, from the day they finally told each other the truth and started being brothers again

[snorlaxlovesme]

Matthew Lynch fucking up Declan’s car in every possible way as he drives like 3 miles has me LIVING

[snorlaxlovesme]

i feel like i need to take a moment before i start reading again to just point out that Maggie Stiefvater has this really weird-cool mind-bendy way of making twists somehow not a surprise. like, i know how on a re-read or re-watch of a show you’re supposed to be like “OH, NOW i can see the hints that the creator was laying out the entire time for this big reveal!” but for Stief it’s like she’s literally telling you the secret twist ending over and over again so by the time she tells you you’re somehow surprised and like....didn’t I already know this? didn’t my subconscious know this the whole time?

i’m speaking specifically about 1. in trc, ronan dreaming cabeswater, 2. in MI, ronan dreaming bryde, and 3. the source of the apocalyptic fire

idk i just really like how she’s managed to do this sort of twist more than once and that it’s always hit for me. maybe i’m just a gullible reader or maybe this sort of twist only works when your protagonist is someone capable of bending time and reality so it makes anything possible, but it’s fun nonetheless and i tip my hat to her for being so proficient at it

[snorlaxlovesme]

genuinely curious how far back this Greywaren origin story existed. like did she have any knowledge of this during her years writing TRC and then just have no place to put it in? TRC was originally supposed to be five books, do you think this tale would have been included in book 5 had it existed?

[snorlaxlovesme]

it’s hard to say what I feel about Greywaren because it was such a clusterfuck of things I didn’t expect and things I’d been waiting for. but i think that overall i’m happy with it. my sister has been asking me as i read The Dreamer Trilogy “so if i’ve only read TRC, would you recommend that I read TDT too or stop?” and that’s been what i’ve been grappling with the whole time. and i think that as a TRC reader and massive fan, i think this series worth following up with, if i was telling a casual fan.

as a fandom we all knew that the ending of TRC (while still fantastic in its own right and should not be discredited) was a bit of a clusterfuck, due to Maggie’s failing health and the fact that a five-book series needed to be whittled down to four, making Gansey’s death a lot shorter than it could have been. it means that TRK specifically has left a lot of What Ifs that got harder and harder to ignore. i really wanted to know what Maggie could write in more ideal circumstances, with more creative freedom and a body with fewer parasites in it. and i think that she did a great job delivering an ending that satisfied me, actually a lot better than a lot of her books do (i’ve often found her endings kind of weak)

BUT. and this is an incredibly big but (har har) a thing that has always ALWAYS grated me about The Dreamer Trilogy is that it was presented as a sister series instead of a sequel series. having a series that takes place directly after a mindblowing series like TRC and having to act like NONE of that development affects where the characters start in this series just fucking ate at me constantly. Maggie has to jump through so many writing hoops to make CDTH make sense since she can’t introduce an already established character and assume the reader has knowledge of them and it drove me nuts. it makes CDTH an incredibly annoying read for me to this day, despite all the good content in it, because every time a TRC specific scenario or cameo appears i always have to step back and wonder what non-TRC readers think is happening right here, and pick apart the way Maggie has to find a way to shoehorn previous plot points into a narrative that doesn’t really allow time for Mr. Gray flashback, doesn’t have the space to really get into the nitty gritty of Adam’s abuse or his use of magic, and such. things like that needing to be smooshed down into like a two-paragraph summarization of BOOKS worth of development was....annoying.

MI has a lot less TRC content which makes it more enjoyable, and by the time Greywaren comes around and the TRC easter eggs start popping in every other page I legit just have to assume that MAGGIE assumed she’d given TDT readers plenty of time to pick up TRC so if they don’t know what’s going on by now, that’s on them. Greywaren is an end to ALL of it, not just The Dreamer Trilogy, that’s super evident.

okay, now time to get into Greywaren specifics. the likes and dislikes. 

i was very thrown by Ronan being asleep for most of the book. i think that bummed me out, for obvious reason, i like Ronan and like his interactions with people. also I just didn’t expect that to be the focal point of the book. but i thought the descriptions of the sweetmetal sea were really cool and i like just the viney, veiny, lightning strike descriptions of Ronan’s consciousness when he was in that nebulous dreaming space. so much of this books is really High Concept and i think that Maggie did a good job helping me envision something so surreal

i loved every page with Adam, unsurprisingly, even the ones where he told Declan he was just gonna LEAVE Ronan’s body and never visit it (absolutely insane thing to say, Adam, what the fuck). but the description of that scene, how Adam could barely even look at Ronan, were super telling. i thought the development of Adam’s character was fantastic despite having so little of him in the series. the scene where he works out all of his troubles, told in essay format? fucking divine writing. having his story mainly be about his love of Ronan, his proficiency with magic, and his desire to Be a Normal Successful Student With No Tragic Backstory were SO GOOD. i wish that the ending was a bit more concrete about where his life went in the epilogue, but knowing that he gets a good job and gets Ronan is enough. i’m still satisfied.

Hennessy and Jordan is muddier. i guess i wanted a more concrete answer as to why they were proficient in making sweetmetals, though im glad they eventually got good enough at it to help out the world and make it a career. i liked that we finally got the answer that Jordan is what Hennessy would be without the influence of Jay. her optimism and her drive were all things that were stripped away from Hennessy because of her childhood (AND because she’s a dreamer). i think that Jordan’s story was more MI than this, but i always enjoy reading Jordan’s perspective.

Hennessy learning that her artist’s ability made her made her supernaturally valuable was really nice, though. i liked that she finally found the same sort of power that Ronan had when dreaming, but in the waking world. that was very cool. 

Hennessy’s relationship with Farooq-Lane was....interesting.

Listen. I’m going to be real here. I don’t really care for Carmen much. I care for Liliana even less. They’re integral pieces to this story, but I didn’t like them at all in CDTH, they grew on me a little in MI when they realized working for the Mods was wrong, and they fell a little bit flat for me in this series. I did not care with Liliana died, I literally THOUGHT that Carmen died and had to go read the epilogue again just now to see if she was in it (apparently she lived). Idk. i don’t want to say the relationship between Carmen and Hennessy was forced, but for me the spark wasn’t there. that might just be because Hennessy’s relationship with Ronan was much messier and more interesting than her and Carmen’s. 

Carmen’s whole intrigue for me was centered around Nathan. I liked all the insight we got into her having a serial killer brother and the emotional complexity behind that. Thinking that he died at the very beginning of the series and all the horrible feelings associated with helping KILL your brother and the fact that your brother killed so many. The twist that Nathan was still alive was cool, the fact that he was the REAL apocalypse villain was neat, but I was still upset it wasn’t Bryde who was the real villian

OKAY NOW IT’S TIME TO GET TO THE MEAT AND POTATOES. LET’S TALK ABOUT THE LYNCHES.

I don’t even know where to start. Matthew? Let’s talk about Matthew bc he’s probably the easiest to begin with. Every scene with Matthew was amazing, even if there were only a couple since Declan STOLE HIS SWEETMETAL OFF OF HIM. I’d punch him too, oh my GOD. i’m so happy Matthew punched him. I’m so happy he fucked up his car. i was getting so irate that Declan time and time again kept infantilizing him and treating him like a pet more than a brother and just being really reductive to all of Matthew’s turmoil. so having Matthew snap was amazing. his scene with Bryde in the museum was SO funny. and having him finally return an wipe Declan’s tears away after Declan assumed he’d been dead the whole time was very satisfying. i desperately want art of that reunion

Ronan was. well. RONAN. all caps. like him being a manifest godling makes perfect sense, it tied together why Cabeswater favored him, why his dreaming was more powerful than anyone else’s in the whole series (besides Bryde, the Experienced Dreamer dreamt by said godling). i want to read the whole series again with this complete picture of Ronan. knowing that FEELINGS, all caps, were dreamed into him by Niall intentionally to make him more human, to make him deeply understand humanity, was such a fantastic detail. and knowing that there was a REASON behind the batshit rule of no one mentioning dreaming outright, of Niall never teaching Ronan how to dream. that’s some GOOOODD retconning right there

and sidenote, all the Niall/Mor flashbacks, being told in those expository chapters to give the reader more and more of a complete picture, and then later revealed as the threads of memory to be given to Declan at the end of the book? GENIUS way of formatting that. i loved that that exposition could be so neatly given over to Declan like that

and man. fuck. Declan.

Declan and Mor and NIALL. 

on the one hand i’m actually MAD that Niall got a redemption arc, purely for the fact that for the past seven years that i’ve been in the fandom we’ve been ragging on him so hard to the point where it’s a meme. Worst Father of the Year with always always be Niall, so having Maggie so completely flip that was so GENIUS and so infuriating lol

but Godddd, finding out that Declan had always been Niall’s favorite hurt me in ways nothing else in TDT ever could. he took away his memory of Declan’s birth because it was the happiest moment of his life and he couldn’t bear to revisit it with Mor leaving like that. that he brought Declan with him on all of his travels BECAUSE HE WANTED TO BE CLOSE TO HIM aHH it’s so fucked up. i have not stopped thinking about the scene were Declan is sick and you can tell that Niall went through hell to make it back home to him just so he could drape Declan across him and hug him while he slept. it’s such a tender image it hurts my heart. especially to be followed up by all of the family having to abandon all tender Declan moments to rid the room of the dreamt claddaugh rings afterwards. just another instance of Declan’s pain having to be pushed aside in favor of dealing with dreams AUGH

all the times Declan thought “I hate you” meaning “I miss you”??? the searing memory that the Barns weren’t left to him, but the DC townhouse was because Niall knew that Declan wanted to go into politics and this would put him closer to the action?? I WEEP

reading the whole series recontextualized with this knowledge is going to break my brain

and the symbolism of Declan not being a part of the final showdown and having to put his trust in other people? to allow others to carry HIM? i weep more. god, Declan, god.

there’s so much i could say about just Declan alone. there’s so much i could say about the whole series but this is ridiculously long as it is. i didn’t even get to mention the John Wick-style MASSACRE Declan unleashed in the Fairy Market because of how fucking wrecked he was about Matthew and how desperate he was to wake Ronan.  the essays one could write about Declan Lynch, man.

and i need an entire BLOG dedicated to all the callbacks and easter eggs in Greywaren that reference something from the other six books. i stg only half of the pages in Greywaren were original content an the rest was an amalgamation of quotes from the rest of the series. i felt so insane frantically flipping through like BLLB to find the quote of Ronan dreaming “a piece of Cabeswater, a dream” and having that mind-bending piece of a dream pop up in the Greywaren epilogue. shit like THAT made me feel like a mad scholar just tearing through the other books to find that specific references and parallels like that. Genius writing. so much fun.

i’m gonna cut it short here, though. i will probably have much more to say and will be saying it in smaller chunks as time goes on, i have no idea if any of these opinions are commonplace or Hot Takes, but i’m interested to see what the fandom thinks about Greywaren.

so yeah. Greywaren thoughts! the end.

[snorlaxlovesme]

all the books I needed to have within arm’s reach when reading Greywaren (sorry TRB but unfortunately this is not about you, sweetie)

[snorlaxlovesme]

okay SO WHAT if i really liked the ending and maybe even cried a little bit at the moth finally flying away, SO WHAT

[snorlaxlovesme]

there is so little of this book left and im like OKAY STIEF WHAT ARE WE DOING

[snorlaxlovesme]

“Kicking was something that this body had done back when he was younger, when he was a kid. He wasn’t a kid anymore. He was barely even Ronan Lynch anymore. He didn’t have to take up any of that body’s habits that he didn’t need anymore.”

what am i supposed to be feeling about this. ronan is awake and i am happy. ronan is barely ronan and i am feeling bad. adam is gone. either bryde or matthew has visionary-exploded. declan is unconscious. somehow in all of this, Gansey still has yet to make an appearance. and Nathan. is liliana dead? WHAT is this quote supposed to make me feel

[snorlaxlovesme]

oh not Mor calling Declan DAUNTLESS

[snorlaxlovesme]

alright we’re gonna ignore that last chapter and focus instead on how at age fucking two Niall was toting Declan to slaughterhouses to jumpstart a horrible metaphor for how the rest of his life would go

[snorlaxlovesme]

They were happy and sad, angry and forgiven, they were wanted, they were wanted, they were wanted.

SCREAMING SO LOUD MY THROAT BLEEDS