Books: The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater

[flamebyrd]

I finished the final book a couple of days ago. Here are some thoughts.

Spoilers below! If you loved these books unreservedly, you may want to give this a miss, as I enjoyed them but I definitely have reservations.

So I tore through these pretty quickly - the writing is compelling and the plot definitely went in interesting directions. I think in general I've moved on emotionally from characters like these, so I wasn't the target audience, but I'm not sorry I read it.

📖 I liked Blue but I wish she'd had more of a life outside the raven boys, particularly in the first book. We see her home life (which I loved), and then once she gets drawn into the boys' circle they become her whole life and draw her away from her family. Maybe this is meant to say something, but it makes me uncomfortable.

📖 I really liked Blue's home life though. What a great concept.

📖 I have a lot of thoughts that I can't really articulate about Adam and the (lie that is the) American Dream and his insistence on making it alone, and how the books don't challenge his point of view enough. This idea of the "model" poor person who works hard and Doesn't Accept Charity just bothers me.

📖 Noah was my favourite. I was sadly spoiled that one of the boys was a ghost, so I figured out which one it was pretty quickly. But I loved his anxiety and snark and accidental humour - that giveaway line "I've been dead for seven years" is funny until a) you realize it's true, and b) you get to Whelk thinking "Czerny didn't really have a sense of humour. He just sometimes says things that happen to be funny." (But actually I hadn't picked Noah and Whelk's Czerny as the same person so that was a surprise.) I also felt like the reveal came across really nicely in the prose - suddenly the vagueness of his presence makes sense, how he just seems to vanish from scenes without acknowledgement. (How did he even come to know Gansey and co.? Please tell me there's fic about that.)

📖 How did Noah's car get to Cabeswater, anyway? It wasn't found near his body, right?

📖 I thought it was nice that Stiefvater had introduced Henry Cheng without directly drawing attention to his race but that all fell apart in the fourth book when she drew attention to it by having two of the boys be sniggeringly racist about him. Not cool.

📖 So if Glendower wasn't sleeping, who was the third sleeper?

📖 Ronan's whole backstory was so deeply strange, I really liked it even when I was finding him a little tiresome (sorry). What a fascinating dysfunctional family that was.

📖 I'd figured Noah wasn't likely to make it through the series intact and, well, I was right, but I don't really follow what happened? He was living time circularly, like Cabeswater, and he was the one who delivered the original message about Glendower to Gansey (was he also the one who brought him back to life?), but how did he even know about Glendower? Whelk didn't. Is this just mystical knowledge one gets when one is murdered on an unawakened ley line?

📖 So glad Adam and Ronan made it out alive and together. A nice change.

📖 I am trying to think of something to say about Gansey here and drawing a blank. I think I liked him? Clueless and so, so obsessed, this is my type in many ways. But I found him a bit opaque somehow.

📖 I'm a little disappointed we never got to see how the Camaro's wheel got in that lake XD


In summary: I enjoyed it, I don't think I liked it as much as some and I'm not feeling the need to run out and engage fannishly (unless someone wants to rec me Noah fic), but it was nice to see what all the talk was about.

Comments

[isis]

I wrote a fic about how the Camaro's wheel got in that lake! (But Noah only briefly appears early on, and it's a relatively long fic mostly focusing on the OT4, so it may not be to your interests.) I also wrote an ensemble gen fic for Yuletide a few years ago (after only the first two books were out) for the prompt 'a happy ending for Noah'. And some Noah recs:

this my excavation which is Noah/Ronan

(Carrion Comfort) is also tagged Noah/Ronan but is more friendship ficlet (very short)

Don't worry if you don't feel inclined to follow these - I'm actually not in the fandom any more (haven't been since before the last book) and so not looking to engage fannishly at all. But I did enjoy my time in the fandom!

[flamebyrd]

The thing about coming in after the final book is that most of the fic I found seemed to be ship-based, and all that was adequately handled in canon so I didn't feel a great need to dive into it. But I'm not opposed to reading it, so I'll check yours (and your recs) out!

(And I'm not completely Noah obsessed. Probably. Ahem.)