The Raven Boys

The Raven Boys (2012) Maggie Stiefvater

This cover kinda makes me wish I’d gotten a print book of this.

Not enough to make me want the hardback, but I really love this cover.

Blue Sargent comes from a family of psychics, but isn’t psychic herself. Instead, she seems to be some sort of psychic amplifier, which doesn’t do her any good, but occasionally helps her family members when they have a difficulty reading.

The other things Blue knows is that if she ever kisses her true love, he will die. Every psychic and clairvoyant she has ever known has told her this, so she doesn’t doubt it.

The other thing she doesn’t doubt is that the boys from Aglionby Academy–the raven boys as the town refers to them–are nothing but trouble. Which is why it’s extra disturbing when Blue finds herself involved with a group of raven boys–including one boy whose death in the coming year has been foreseen.

Gansey is the head of his little group of friends: Gansey, Adam, Noah, and Ronan. They all go to Aglionby Academy, and with the exception of Gansey, they all seem damaged in one way or another.

Blue has a very odd family–raised by her mother and her aunts–who may or may not actual be aunts.

Maura had decided sometime before Blue’s birth that it was barbaric to order children about, and so Blue had grown up surrounded by imperative question marks.

Mind you, Maura isn’t one of those stupid or absent mothers one sometimes finds in fiction. She’s just different.

“This is what you get, Maura, for using your DNA to make a baby,” Calla said.

That cracked me up.

Of the boys, Gansey has the most power–both overtly through money and through his family–but also through his place in his group of friends. But it’s Ronan–so bitter and doing his best to be unlikable–that I ended up finding the most endearing.

From the passenger seat, Ronan began to swear at Adam. It was a long, involved swear, using every forbidden word possible, often in compound-word form. As Adam stared at his lap, penitent, he mused that there was something musical about Ronan when he swore, a careful and loving precision to the way he fit the words together, a black-painted poetry. It was far less hateful sounded than when he didn’t swear.

But I also feel for Gansey, especially when he talks himself into trouble.

“My words are unerring tools of destruction, and I’ve come unequipped with the ability to disarm them.”

I’ve felt that way many, many times.

This was a very good story, that I all but devoured in a single sitting, and one I can easily and highly recommend.

The only down side is this is the first in a quartet, so there’s a fair amount of waiting that’s going to be coming.
Rating: 8/10

Published by Scholastic Press

 
 

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