Book Review: Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater

Trigger Warning: Mentions of suicide and mental illness.

Mister Impossible is the second book in The Dreamer Trilogy by Maggie Stiefvater. This is also the second series in the Ravens Boy franchise. So you should read those books first if you haven’t already. Mister Impossible starts where Call Down the Hawk leaves off with Ronan with Bryde and Hennessey on the run from The Moderators and protecting other Dreamers. The dreamers depend on their powers to fight the moderators, but their power is strangely weakening. Ronan’s brother, Declan chases after his love interest, Jordan after she sends him a postcard from Boston.

Jordan knows that she will die if the dreaming disappears, so she is trying to create an object that will keep her awake and alive. Declan helps, both for Jordan’s and his brother, Matthew’s sake. Carmen is a moderator, scared that the dreamers are going to destroy the world. But she begins to wonder if the moderators are right. Ronan and Hennessey don’t seem much like her serial killer zed brother, Nathan. And the moderators are also cruel to her girlfriend, Liliana.

I listened to the audiobook version of this novel while cleaning. I ended up cleaning almost my entire room, which truly is a testament to how good Mister Impossible is because I hate cleaning. Will Patton is such a fantastic actor for reading this series. His voice is really what I imagine as Ronan’s voice with his rough gravelly tone, and Southern accent.

But the magic of the series comes mainly, I think, from the characters themselves. I fell in love with Ronan Lynch while reading The Raven Cycle and was excited to see more of him, his family, and his boyfriend, Adam Parrish while reading The Dreamer Trilogy. Ronan is such an interesting character because on hand he seems like a stereotype, his aesthetic and general demeanor scream edgy goth guy. But he has a sensitive side. He’s a farmer and a dreamer. He creates wonderful things, and he loves his family and Adam.

Ronan also has a very complicated relationship with his brother, Declan. Declan isn’t presented as a likable character in The Raven Cycle. He’s just Ronan’s naggy older brother, whom Ronan gets into multiple fistfights with. He doesn’t seem to like Ronan at all. But we get some of his perspective in The Dreamer Trilogy and we see how much he loves Ronan.

All that nagging comes from love, from concern for Ronan. They are orphans, so Declan has to parent Ronan. We readers, see that Declan is constantly stressed, and with good reason. Ronan has had a suicide attempt and has been endangered by his own dream creatures, and other people who don’t like that he’s a Dreamer. Ronan also will die if he gets too far away from the ley line or stops dreaming for too long. Matthew is a dream, and therefore if Ronan dies, he dies as well.

The Dreamer Trilogy has also introduced new characters, like Jordan, Hennessey, and Carmen Farooq-Lane. Jordan is a great love interest for Declan because he loves art and she is an artist. She is also the only one who is able to see him for who he truly is. He pretends to be boring with everyone else, so he doesn’t call attention to his family. But he shows her the paintings in his attic. Declan trusts her, in a way he doesn’t trust anyone else. It’s also ironic that he’s with her because he says he “doesn’t have it in him to love another dream.” But he loves her anyway. Jordan is also an interesting character in her own right, she is able to help Matthew because he doesn’t currently know any other dream people. She also mirror’s Hennessey since she is her copy.

Interestingly, Hennessey herself also mirrors Ronan because they are both depressed dreamers with parental issues. Ronan is more in control of his dreams than Hennessey, but like Hennessey, he wishes that someone would help him with his dreaming. This is why they both listen to Bryde. Also because they have parental issues. Hennessey has a deadbeat dad; Ronan has a deadbeat mom. Hennessey’s mother killed herself in front of her, and Ronan’s father was killed in the driveway of his family home. Suffice it to say, they have very similar traumas. This is why dreaming works so well as a metaphor for mental and chronic illness. They are literally almost killed by their own nightmares.

Also, they are both LGBTQ+. While this isn’t directly linked to their trauma, it does probably add to their alienation. Ronan mentions being gay in the same paragraph as mentioning being a Dreamer after all. Also in the same paragraph as he mentions Neil’s murder. Therefore, in Ronan’s mind, these three things are linked. On the other hand, Hennessey is very laissez-faire about her sexuality, confidently flirting with other women.

Adam is only briefly in Mister Impossible when Declan visits him at Harvard because Ronan asked him to. He seems to think that he and Ronan have broken up because Ronan suddenly went off the grid and hasn’t called him. This is a fair assumption since that is a pretty extreme form of ghosting. Still, it broke my heart because Ronan only did that go into hiding from the moderators. Meanwhile, Ronan’s upset that Adam didn’t text him back before Ronan had to get rid of his phone.

The novel ultimately ends on a cliffhanger which resulted in me starting the final book, Greywaren, immediately afterward. I will share a review of that novel as well this month. I haven’t felt so intensely fixated on reading a book in such a long time. My only complaint was that there was enough Adam in it. Still, I give it five out of five stars.

Mister Impossible. Maggie Stiefvater. Scholastic Inc. 2022. Audiobook. 9h 53m.