Review: THE RAVEN KING by Maggie Stiefvater

 

Title: The Raven King (The Raven Cycle #4)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Release Date: April 26, 2016
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Supernatural
Source: book bought
Buy Links: Amazon | B & N | Indiebound | iBooks

The fourth and final installment in the spellbinding series from the irrepressible, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater.

All her life, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love’s death. She doesn’t believe in true love and never thought this would be a problem, but as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

 

Why did I want to read this book?

This has been a long time coming. I think I’ve read the first three books of this series not long after one another but because life got in the way, as it wont to do, this fourth and final installment of the series was left collecting dust on my book shelf. But I still wanted to know what happens to Blue and her Aglionby boys and I knew that one time or another, I was going to finish this book. And I did.

 

What worked for me?

Depending on where you began the story, it was about Maggie Stiefvater. And her words. And the way she makes things come alive in your mind with her words. It’s about the world she built that I was able to inhabit while reading her books. It was about her unerring pacing and the twists and turns that surprised me and made me swore out loud while turning the pages as fast as I could.

I love the connections most of all. Each and every kind of connection created in this book, from how each of our main characters are connected, to how each of them are connected to the other secondary characters, to how events are connected, to how their thoughts and feelings are connected. It takes a truly great storyteller to be able to weave this kind of magnificent tapestry of a reading experience, really.

When I was nearing the end of the book though, and I know a lot of you get this feeling too sometimes, I wanted to finish it because I wanted to know what happens to everyone in the end but at the same time, I feel this weight on my hands as I was turning the pages because I could see the remaining pages getting thinner and fewer. And honestly, I didn’t think I was ready to say goodbye to these characters.

And lastly, I just wanted to give this book a seriously long hug, for getting me out of my reading rut. For the longest time, I was starting books but never really maintained the motivation or interest to continue and finish those books. I was looking for something that would, well, spark joy, so to speak. And this book got me back into reading again. It’s the first book I’ve finished in a while. And I’m truly grateful for it for making me realize what a great experience it is to read something so well-written that it stays with you.

 

What did not work for me?

I need more. I need more from these characters. And by more, I mean, I wasn’t really ready to say goodbye to them. And voila, it’s so good to know that Maggie Stiefvater is writing a new series called The Dreamer Trilogy!

 

My over-all take on it?

I love this book. It’s a series ender that did not disappoint. And I want to tell you that if you’ve been as invested as I had been reading through this series, I am happy to let you know that it was all worth it.

 

My rating:

 

 

I am Maggie Stiefvater. I write books. Some are about dead Welsh kings. Some are about werewolf nookie. Some are about neither.

I have been a wedding musician, a technical editor, a portrait artist, and, for several fraught weeks, a waitress. I play several musical instruments (most infamously, the bagpipes), I still make art, and I recently acquired and unacquired a race car.

I live in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia with my husband, my two children, some cows, three dogs who fart recreationally, a criminally insane cat, an interminable number of miniature silky fainting goats, and one 1973 Camaro named Loki.

I like things that go.

Connect with Maggie Stiefvater:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Blog | Tumbler | Instagram

 

 

 

More Maggie Stiefvater on the blog:

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1)
The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle #2)
Blue Lily, Lily Blue (The Raven Cycle #3)

Have your read the Raven Cycle series? (Btw, in case you haven’t noticed yet, I loved it! And you should definitely read it.) Who is your favorite character in the series? And what did you think of that series ending?