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. (Goodreads)
After four books, i'm still so torn about how I feel about these books. I see many die hard fans on social media, and I see many people who aren't too fussed on the series. I'm there in the middle. At some points I sit there thinking "Oh, wow!" and then at others my attention starts to slip. I keep finding myself asking "Do I love this series?" It may take a reread for me to really decide whether it do or not.
Stiefvater's writing is A+++++, its beautiful. It's the thing I love most about these books. It's reason enough to pick up a copy of these books. The Raven King is no different. She mixes funny and casual teenage-talk with gorgeous descriptions and heart stopping one-liners.
I felt my interest in the story dip whenever the point-of-view switched to someone outside the main four characters (and Noah), despite them being necessary to the plot development. I totally get why some people are obsessed with these characters, each of them is so fleshed out, so well imagined. It's not hard to imagine them as real people. Each of them has flaws and each of them know the others aren't perfect. They lose their tempers, they fight, they poke fun, like people do. Like friends do.
Also, the character development for them all is just perfect. Everyone ended a more mature, better version of who they started the series as.
The magic in previous books felt more realistic, despite magic not actually being real (Or is it????) Since this is the last book, it felt as though as it was made bigger and sped up to heighten the tension of the finale to build to a climax, it lost some of its realism. Less was explained, but you're so caught up the ending, you go alone with it.
How I feel about the climax is how I feel about the whole series: torn. I loved it, but also I didn't. As a reader, I never say the story should've gone this way or ended like this. I'm not the author, I didn't create this story and I take what they give me. So I loved The Raven King because we said goodbye to these characters through Stiefvater's wonderful writing and it made me want to cradle the book in my hands. However, I also felt the ending was anticlimactic. I don't think it should've ended any other way, it ended the way it was supposed to, but the build up of three and three-quarter books made me expect a bang, but it was almost like the bomb landed unexploded.
I'm loving looking at the whole series together on my shelves now. They all look beautiful lined up next to each other.
4 stars - I'm excited to see whats next to Maggie Stiefvater!
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