I always find it hard to review the last book of a series, mostly because I so hate knowing that I’ve spent over 1,000 pages with a cast of characters that I have to leave behind. And I will absolutely miss the Raven Boys and their psychic battery, Blue.
Stiefvater’s greatest feat was creating such lovable and relatable characters out of personalities that could have easily wandered into cliche or become incredibly annoying. But they never do, even as the plot goes literally crazy around them. The five kids ground what could have been an absolutely outrageous story, but their level-headed friendships and general acceptance of every strange thing happening around them and taking it in stride keeps this plot in the hands of the reader with little issue. Because, seriously, the plot goes absolutely bonkers in this last book.
This book was not as perfect as book 3….I loved Blue Lily, Lily Blue, and it will go down as my favorite of the series….book 4 had a ton of ground to cover to get us to the end, and while I was mostly satisfied with how it all turned out, there were a few story-lines left unresolved (at least they were to me), and I was left wondering what happened to those characters. I would also have liked to see Adam and Ronan’s relationship built up more directly in book 3 so we were ready for the serious turn their interactions take in the last volume. To me, their pairing seemed to come a little out of left field, and like the issues I had with Kavinsky in book 2, I think if we’d had just a little more build about Ronan’s sudden infatuation with Adam in book 3, it wouldn’t have felt so shoe-horned in book 4. I felt like someone happened to mention that there weren’t any gay characters in her series, so in book 4, she just shoved them in. While I loved the Ronan/Adam pairing; they’re perfect for each other, it would have been nice to see this explored a little more.
But all in all, this was a gorgeous series and I fully enjoyed getting lost in Stiefvater’s beautiful prose and vivid world.
4 stars, and I highly recommend the whole series.
See, I disagree with you entirely about Ronan and Adam, but that’s possibly because I re-read the first three books in the series before The Raven King came out, and it might be that Ronan’s feelings for Adam were more obvious throughout the series in hindsight. It’s all there in the background, but to begin with, Ronan is so mean to everyone, and Adam is so infatuated with Blue.
I don’t for a second believe that Stiefvater shoe-horned their relationship in because someone complained about a lack of gay characters, she’s been fairly vocal in interviews and on her blog about the writing process of the whole series and it seems clear to me that Ronan and Adam were the end game all along.
She’s now writing a new trilogy in the same universe with the two of them, and I’m assuming we’ll get to see what happened to the others as well.
It totally might have been because i read them so close together, and missed the building going on underneath.
I am totally reading the new trilogy. I found adam and ronan far more interesting than the other 2