The Dream Thieves Prologue

The Dream Thieves starts with a prologue, on secrets. I felt, as a reader who had not read the first book, the prologue contained important information to set up The Dream Thieves.

It basically gives the reader a quick overview of Ronan as a character, who is the main character for this second book in the series. We learn about Ronan’s connection with his father, Niall Lynch, and who Niall was as a character. For example, Stiefvater says that he “was a braggart poet, a loser musician” and “a rogue and a fiend.” He would say Ronan’s name “as if he had meant to say another word entirely–something like knife or poison or revenge,” hinting at the complicated relationship between father and son. The mysterious way that the Lynches got their money sets up the family dynamic and the kind of background that Ronan comes from. We also, of course, learn that Ronan can bring objects from his dreams into reality.

As discussed in class, The Raven Cycle series has a dedicated fandom, and I believe that one of the reasons it does is the way Siefvater sets up Ronan as a “mysterious” and almost damaged character, which makes the character easy to build on and play with.

Also, while The Dream Thieves as a book makes sense as a book on its own, I felt that I  did not care about the characters in the way that I would have had if I had known their journey through the first book.

2 responses to “The Dream Thieves Prologue”

  1. elgriott Avatar
    elgriott

    I really enjoyed reading your post! I’ve read the first book, so I had more context when reading the second, which is probably why I enjoyed it more than a lot of our classmates.

    I definitely agree with your assessment of TRC fandom and Ronan Lynch. He’s the broken boy savagely holding himself together with no intention to salvage the pieces or achieve salvation. Aka, he’s fandom fodder. I find fandoms attract a lot of different people with the same core character trait: they’re fixers. The sort of person compelled to tuck in tags, or respond to complaint with a detailed action plan, or to sit on the computer for hours trying to make sense of a ridiculously bad canon by concocting intense metatheory and analysis (me).

    So having a character that’s broken AND pretty like a knife? Ronan never had a chance.

    Like

    Reply
  2. ethanmakulec Avatar
    ethanmakulec

    I also have not read the first book and felt fairly similarly. Without the first book to give us a more solid background for Ronan (or the other characters) it leads to the basic summary provided by the prologue becoming the only initial foundation for his character. Without having read any of the earlier events in depth ourselves, Ronan’s damage and the past that caused it seem very superficial to me, less like a vaguely tragic hero and slightly more like he was just angsty with daddy issues.

    Had I read the first book, my impression maybe would have changed, and I tried to restrain myself from viewing Ronan like this too much, but due to the nature of the fandom and the series itself I have my doubts that I’d ever feel a huge amount of emotional sympathy and connection to him as his degree of broken-ness can start to feel played out.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a reply to ethanmakulec Cancel reply