Review: Call Down the Hawk

One thing cannot be argued … Maggie Stiefvater is one hell of a storyteller. Her ability to conjure eloquence and the absurd astound me.

Sometimes though, I felt lost. I feel like Maggie and her characters are in some secret club of knowing what the hell is going on and I’m knocking at the club door asking to be let in. She likes to leave crumbs, slowly build the puzzle a little at a time until the hold-onto-your-seat ending.

It probably ties into my impatience, but sometimes I’d just like to know more of what is happening!

I think I can best explain it like this: Call Down the Hawk read to me like the song Hall of the Mountain King … starts of almost imperceptibly, quietly, annoyingly because you know something is coming and bloody bring it already! Then the ending … one huge psychedelic free for all.

Of course this picks up after the events of The Raven Cycle – do you need to have read the whole series? No, not necessarily, but it would definitely help … a lot!

Dreamers are those who possess the ability to bring back contents of the dream world – scary, disturbing, fantastical, amazing things. Including animals of all kinds. These are the dreamed. They cannot live their own life as they are forever tied to their dreamer creator. If the dreamer dies, the dreamed go into a forever state of sleep.

Ronan is a dreamer. Jordan Hennesy is a dreamed art forger and thief. Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter and murderer who hunts the dreamers and the dreamed in order to prevent the vague “end of the world” that will be brought upon by the dreamers as has been foretold by visionaries.

All these story lines eventually collide in a high stakes ending …

Do I even need to speak of character development? No one can create vivid characters quite like Maggie. It is unparalleled. The story, the concept, the world, the vivid details, the vivid characters … she is so intimidatingly intelligent and this story brings it all. While I am always impatient to know more and know it faster – that doesn’t mean this story wasn’t brilliant. Because it was.

If you liked the Raven Series you’ll love this. If you want to read a master class in character development, read this. If you enjoy a book full of quotable lines and want to be blown away by simple sentences of absolute genius, read this. If you love a slow build, this will be your next 5 star read.

Heart stopping, brutal, gritty, bloody, and so stinking intelligent. Just a bit slow for my taste.

4.5*