"Call Down the Hawk" by Maggie Stiefvater

Call Down the Hawk (Nov. 5, 2019) by Maggie Stiefvater.

These are the Lynch brothers three: Declan (boring and forgettable, except for his shoes), Ronan (the dreamer) and Matthew (the dreamed). Ronan’s waking dream is to be with his boyfriend, Harvard student Adam Parrish, but his sleep-filled dreams won’t allow that (double-sided murder crabs are not delightful). And even without his proclivity for bringing objects back upon waking that might be murderous or plain inexplicable, there’s the nightwash to deal with. Mysterious, unseen fellow dreamer Bryde visits Ronan’s dreamspace and presents him with challenges. One involves saving Jordan Hennessy (goes by Hennessy) and, in turn, her copies. Hennessy is clearly a dreamer, though neither she nor Jordan (the first) nor any of her other copies has ever met another dreamer. Hennessy only sleeps in 20-minute bursts to try to keep herself and therefore the rest of her doppelgängers alive a little while longer. Something sentient in her dreams demands release, and it will eventually kill her, she believes. Then there is Carmen Farooq-Lane. Her brother was a dreamer, and she watched as another killed him (they weren’t careful, for the trees were watching). Carmen is part of a secret, government-backed organization that hunts Zeds (a.k.a. dreamers). Carmen is a Moderator, and they are aided by Visionaries. The thing about Visionaries is, if they don’t learn to channel their powers inward, they will kill anything living within a 15-foot radius. The switch-off is that they’d instead be killing themselves in the end. But they are working to prevent a prophesized apocalypse. There will be fire. As for the dreamers, they can’t stop the dreams; the best they can do is attempt to control them and avoid being killed.

            The first in The Dreamer Trilogy is like chaos manifested, not in a disorganized manner, but in an imaginative, adventurous, artfully busy way. I’ve known the Lynch brothers since The Raven Cycle and felt invested in this story as soon as I’d heard of its publication date. Stiefvater does not disappoint with her complicated, fully-fleshed-out characters with their tragedy, romance, magic and surreal reality. The characters are complemented by the YA novel’s provoking and dramatic plot and the excellent world-building. This fantasy novel is exceptional, and I expect the trilogy to be epic. “Call Down the Hawk” is accessible to those who haven’t first read The Raven Cycle tetralogy, but I’d recommend reading it first.