“All of his footsteps
had led him to this moment, surely.”
I’m the kind of book-loving person who doesn’t like
‘normal,’ book reviews. Unless reviewing books is your job, I don’t need a
summation of plot—I can get that on the cover. What I want to know is how the
book made you feel. How the characters made you feel. Was it the kind of story
that makes you glow or the kind that makes you want to rip out the pages and
watch them burn? Those are the things I care about. So here is my review of The
Raven King (really, the entire Raven Cycle) and how it made me feel…everything.
I have never struggled so mightily to read the last book in
a series. I cared too much. I didn’t want it to end. I wasn’t prepared to say
farewell. Some of that has to do with what’s going on in my own life right now,
much of it has to do with the magnificent writing and the beloved characters,
but most of it is this: I read books because they give me a way to experience the
things I long for in my own life.
The Raven Cycle is the epitome of all those longings.
I don’t long for family—I’ve got all the love and support I
need in that regard. I’m ‘wealthy in love,’
no doubt. What I have always longed for are friends who become family. I long for the unshakable, unbreakable kind of
friendship depicted so lovingly in The
Raven King, and all the books leading up to this one.
I long for an ordinary life full of extraordinary magic.
I long for a home that mirrors my soul, a place that feeds
my soul. Not long ago my family sold our farm, the farm I grew up on—the place
I assumed for a long time would always be my home. It was an entirely new
experience—aching, painful, wonderful—to go with Ronan to The Barns, his
beloved home; to wander with Gansey around his beloved Henrietta, and to walk
the halls of 300 Fox Way with Blue. I identify heavily with Adam—floundering to
figure out exactly where we belong.
Really, I’m all of the characters in The Raven King.
I’m Noah, invisible to all but those who fiercely love him;
clinging to a life left behind while trying to sort out the one you’ve got now.
I’m Blue, sensible, longing for something more.
I’m Gansey, longing to be known; to be something more.
I’m Adam, known to everyone but himself; walking slowly away
from a past that wants to define him.
I’m Ronan, the broken dreamer with a ferocious heart.
I’m Henry. I’m the women of 300 Fox Way. I’m the Gray Man.
I’m even a little bit Kavinsky, and Greenmantle and Piper and Neeve.
I feel their story
in my bones, in my gut. I hurt when they hurt. Their story makes me smile, and
grieve and laugh. It inspires and amazes and perturbs.
I’m in awe—as a reader, as a writer.
Maggie Stiefvater has often said she likes to “get inside
your head and move around the furniture.”
Well, the furniture has been moved, Stiefvater. It’s been
smashed and rebuilt, refurbished, repainted and repurposed.
My journey with the Raven Boys & Blue is ending. It’s
over. But somehow, somehow…it’s starting,
too.
That is the magic of The
Raven King.
“The head is too wise.
The heart is all fire.”
"If you can't be unafraid, be afraid and happy."
