The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)

by Maggie Stiefvater

[Linda]

This review was originally posted on (un)Conventional Bookviews
The Raven King made me want The Raven Cycle to be circular, never-ending, always continuing, the mystery always just around the next corner...



The Raven King is a beautiful, emotional culmination of Stiefvater's The Raven Cycle series. Most things truly do come full circle, the characters continue to grow and evolve, and the overall plot makes complete sense. And I'm wondering, weeks after I finished reading, if I really have to make sense with my review? Or can I just mostly squee and say that everyone in the world who enjoys reading needs to read The Raven Cycle? Can I just say that Stiefvater is a literary genius? One who knows how to weave words together so that they make a flawless story, showing off a shiny plot, sharing characters that we should all get to know?

I had the pleasure of listening to Stiefvater talk about her audiobooks when I attended BEA in Chicago, and what she shared about The Raven Cycle in general, and The Raven King in particular made me promptly buy all four audiobooks as soon as I left the conference room. This story is amazing, set in a place that we can all recognize, with characters that make sense and seem realistic - even if they exist in a fantasy world, and they have strange powers and capabilities. In the audiobooks, all the music included is Stiefvater's music. How awesome is that? I really, really need more hours in the day, so that I can listen to these beauties now that I have read, fallen in love with, and been emotionally drained (both happy and sad) by them.

I'm not going to share a single detail from The Raven King, because if you haven't read it yet, I want you to be able to enter this story with completely new, innocent eyes, where you can walk alongside Blue and those Raven Boys and make each discovery at the same time they do. And to squee, be afraid, laugh and cry with them - and possibly with all other readers, too - as you go on this last leg of the fantastical journey Stiefvater has created for her own - and all her readers' - great pleasure.



His mother's father had been a diplomat, and architect of fortunes, his father's father had been an architect, a diplomat of styles.

Onward and upward. Had there ever been any doubt? Yes, actually, always, ever, because the Ganseys did not demand favors. Often they didn't even ask. They did unto others and silently hoped others would rise to do it unto them.

He breathed in. He breathed out. He forgot how to exhale when he wasn't at home. 

He didn't know if it had been real. Real was becoming a less useful term all the time.