#itsybitsywidow

adam isn't in this book much, but he does a lot in the periphery. he's impossible because he loves ronan so damn much, something that ronan doesn't think possible, especially at the end of the book. his powers make him impossible, and his unknowability too.

matthew, of course, is impossible simply by being a living dream.

but then you have declan! this man - still a boy, really - who is totally impossible because how can someone be so cookie cutter boring and yet completely intrriguing.

which leads me onto the next point - this whole book is about impossiblities. about dichotomies: how the characters perceive themselves, and how others perceive them. who they think they are, and who they want to be.

matthew perceives himself as unreal, thinks everyone else does to, but they don't. matthew thinks he is nothing more than a dream, and wants nothing more than to be real, to feel real, to be free.

declan perceives himself as the adult, the boring one who can keep his family safe by staying in the shadows- but jordan makes quick work of that grey armour and reveals the boy who loves the enigma he's made himself, who has depth and colour beneath. declan thinks he is straight laced, begins the book thinking he wants to be straight laced, but he absolutely doesn't.

adam is an interesting one, because he perceives himself as nothing at all, as a chameleon with shifting faces which others interpret as he wants them too. even ronan falls for it, which is what makes him all the more impossible. he contains multitudes, and he likes it that way- but he wants some form of stability, and ronan, and the world - and that might be impossible, too.

liliana and carmen are impossible in how they define themselves. liliana, the time bending exploding woman who knew all along that the woman in front of her was the love of her life. carmen, the serial killer's sister, actually developing a functioning moral compass and getting positive character growth, unlike the decay and conflict of most of the characters in this book.

i won't talk about jordan because she's possibly the only mentally stable character in this book (good for her! she had her crisis last book and she deserves her growth) but hennessy. who has lived with this impossible, awful thing in her head all this time. who is impossible, but never thought of herself that way because she's been so goddamn tired this whole time. she perceives herself first as uncovering a new, beautiful power, then suddenly as this broken, useless thing. she thinks she must be unloveable and hated, so she goes out of her way to try and make people treat her how she thinks they should.

we don't really get any of bryde's psychology - perhaps we'll get more insight in the final book.

and that leaves ronan. who is an enigma even to himself, who can't quite find his way back to his own goals, own motives. he wants change, wants better, but the world is so much, so impossible. ronan is the ultimate bundle of dichotomies wrapped in a trenchcoat. he perceives himself as always wrong, abandoned, unloved, but also always right, and explosively reactive when challenged. he thinks he's unloveable, but has all these people terrified for him. he wants to save the world; now he's the thing that destroys it. he is, possibly, the most powerful being in the entire world. how impossible is that, a teenage farmboy having all that inside their head? and how utterly, impossibly isolating?

everything about everything is impossible when you look at the right angle. the magic is impossible, the characters believe so many things are impossible - love, safety, freedom. and ultimate, i think that "mr impossible" is ronan, because everything in these books revolves around him. because he creates the plot and the conflict of other characters and has some form of connection to every other key player. because he's the greywaren, whatever that means. because he created the hero and probably the villain, and just dreamt the fire to end the world. because he's the most powerful dreamer we know of and created two of the other main characters out of his own damn head.