A review by ramunepocky
Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

medium-paced

2.0

I am extremely conflicted about this book. It is pretty much common knowledge that The Raven Cycle is my favourite book series and that I have three tattoos to commemorate it, and I was extremely nervous about reading The Dreamer Trilogy in general, but I really enjoyed Call Down the Hawk for the most part, was a bit confused by the narrative, yes, disliked some of the characters, yes, but generally enjoyed it and had high hopes for the rest of the trilogy. Therefore, I am very conflicted. Because I did not enjoy most of this book. It was so. Messy. There were so many loose threads that were just being pulled and pulled and pulled and instead of finding the end and connected them all together, there were just more loose threads that were coming out entirely. I wanted it to work. It did not work. It’s like instead of having an overarching storyline or instead of resolving plotlines that had already been introduced, she just kept on introducing new storylines and new plot points. And that would have been fine if it all came together in the end and made sense, but it didn’t. 

Don’t get me wrong, there was potential in this book and there were certain aspects of it that I liked. I liked getting to see Jordan have her freedom from Hennessy and I liked seeing her grow into her own person. I liked seeing Matthew stand up for himself and question things a bit more and understand/accept what it means for him to be a dream. I liked. No wait, that was it. 

I didn’t really understand why the sweet metals were introduced and the way that they were introduced and talked about originally made it so hard to grasp wtf was happening and what they were talking about before it finally sunk it. It shouldn’t have been that difficult to grasp. Like I know Boudicca is some pretentious group and have all their secrets and whatnot, but that didn’t mean that us as the reader had to struggle sm to understand what they were talking about. I also fail to understand why they were necessary. The concept of a dream living beyond their dreamer is fascinating and I would have liked to have seen it explored, but in an entirely different way, because this was just too convoluted and unnecessary, and I just didn’t get it. It wasn’t satisfying. 

I hated Bryde with an absolute passion and really, in the end, the entire thing he’d been trying to achieve was for nought considering Hennessy shut down the whole ley line anyway. I also thought it was a giant cop out that instead of him being another powerful entity or dreamer, he was just another dream of Ronan’s. Like get real. Come on. And his existence is essentially useless because in CDTH, it’s built up like finding him is some all-important thing then in this, he is just condescending and makes Ronan and Hennessy do a bunch of stuff, and then he’s not really in Greywaren. So pray tell. What was the point??? 

I love Ronan Lynch with my entire heart, but some aspects of this just felt so out of character to him. And not even the not contacting Adam because he didn’t want to drag him into it. If anything, that was the most Ronan Lynch thing Ronan did this entire book. It irritated me too the way that he trusted Bryde, who he’d known for essentially two minutes, over everyone else in his life, and took his side instead of when, particularly Adam, was telling him they didn’t trust him. Don’t think the Ronan Lynch I know would do that, but okay. I did like seeing his trust and relationship build with Hennessy and them becoming tentative friends, but I also hated Hennessy. She had her moments where she was okay, but she was so unnecessarily cruel, cold, and selfish and it irritated me so much. And I understand that she had a very traumatic past and she says cruel things as a coping mechanism, but the way she treated Jordan particularly frustrated me to no end. Jordan did not deserve that for trying to live her own life free of her, Jordan did not deserve that just because she was happy, and Hennessy was not. And when Hennessy told Jordan that she wished she had died too?? That just wasn’t okay. 

I still do not like Declan, but I think this book and subsequently Greywaren too, helped me understand why he behaves the way he does. I feel for him to an extent, but I also don’t like him. If anything, I feel like this trilogy was about him because he seemed to be the only character that had any kind of tie to most of the threads and he was one of two characters that seemed to get any kind of character development. 

So yeah. The more I sit with it and the more I think about it, the more unhappy I get it.  Maybe one day in the future, I’ll reread this book and like it a lot more, but as it stands, I don’t think I’ll be picking it up again. Or any of Maggie Stiefvater’s other books, but it’s essentially become a proven rule that I don’t get along with any of her books that aren’t The Raven Cycle. All her magic went into those four books and it’s been gone since. 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings