Poudelivre

All ways are good ways to find out about books. I came across Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys through a picture of the second book in the series. The title seemed interesting and I looked into it and eventually ended up with The Raven Boys in my hand. This is something that I, despite the strange journey to actually get it in my hand, haven’t regretted even for a second.

Blue Sargent is the only one in her family that isn’t a psychic and has heard, ever since she was little, that if she kissed her true love he would die. Blue doesn’t believe in love, so this isn’t anything she’s concerned with. Not until her aunt Neeve shows up, a very famous psychic, who immediately tells Blue that this is the year that she falls in love. And every year on St. Mark’s Eve, Blue and her mother is placed on the corpse road to see the souls of soon-to-be dead people, to make a list of everyone who is to die in the next twelve months. This year, Blue’s mother sends her out with Neeve instead. And Blue, who isn’t a psychic and thus can’t see ghosts, is very surprised when she can actually see a boy walking on the corpse road. His name is Gansey and he goes to Aligonby, a private school for very rich boys. He is a raven boy and Blue does her very best to stay as far away from those as possible. They can only mean trouble. But there’s only one reason for a non-seer to see a soul on St. Mark’s Eve. Either he’s your true love or you killed him.

I was both excited and a little unsure about this book. The storyline felt like something that could be really good, but also really boring. I was a little afraid that it would be too much about the love aspect, that Stiefvater somehow would write a book about a love that could never be, torment because they were so in love but a kiss from Blue could kill him. It turned out that it, actually, wasn’t really about that at all. The love story was there, that’s true, but it was more about the raven boys than anything else.

It doesn’t take Blue very long to figure out that the boy she saw at St. Mark’s Eve was a very rich student from Aligonby named Gansey. And written in multiple perspective, you learn that Gansey is looking for ley lines around Henrietta, where they live, in search for an ancient legend, a vanished Welsh king. Gansey believe that the king can be found somewhere around Henrietta and has moved there just because. While there, Gansey has found three boys whom he befriends and takes with him on his journey to find this sleeping king who, it’s said, will grant a wish to the person whom awakens him. These three friends are all different but very dear to Gansey and, later, also to Blue, as she gets to know them. Adam; the shy but stubborn scholarship boy, Ronan; the bad boy and Noah; the silent boy who never really says anything but always listen.

After reading on the back of the book, I thought this would be a book about Blue, the boy she saw on the corpse road and the love between them. That’s not what this book is about, not really. Instead, it’s about Gansey and his search for the ancient king. Blue and the prediction is there, it is, but mostly, The Raven Boys is about the four boys attending Aligonby. It was a bit of a surprise, but a good one. It shouldn’t have been, since the title targets the boys more than Blue and the prediction.

Like I said earlier, it was an interesting story. About ley lines, psychics, ghosts, the supernatural… it was strange. I haven’t read too many of these kinds of books, but I found it really fun and interesting to read. Most fun, I’d say, was to realize that there was so much more hidden in the pages of the novel than the back first let on. And since I thought that the story was about the prediction and what Blue saw that night, I figured this story would be written in only Blues perspective, but like I’ve said already, that wasn’t the case. Instead, you get to see the boys too, not only told from their eyes, but seen by each other. And that was really interesting, because Stiefvater’s characters are very deep and intricate; they’re all hiding something and it was fun to dig deeper into them while reading. To get to know them, to learn and understand why they are who they are. It’s like a story within a story within a story. And it’s very well done by Stiefvater to make this as good as it is, with so much going on.

I won’t lie, it wasn’t the best book I’ve read, by far. It was good, interesting and with a lot of potential. But it wasn’t amazing, even if the last line was very enticing. Though I had already decided to read the sequel before I finished the book, the last line got me really curious of what awaits for Blue and the raven boys in the next book.