The Raven Boys -- a Review by Susan Price
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Book 1, 'The Raven Boys' by Maggie Stiefvater
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I've never had a book recommended to me by Pinterest before.
I don't know why Pinterest started sending me regular emails. I didn't, to my knowledge, ask for them. Maybe I accidentally toggled some toggle or another. Whatever the reason, for some months now, Pinterest has been sending me emails every few days, featuring 'fan art.'
I'm fine with it. I didn't ask for them, but I rather enjoy looking at the cartoons, fan-art 'book covers', portraits of favourite characters and illustrations of favourite scenes, while trying to pick out the real art-work from the AI.
I've never read, or even heard of, most of the books mentioned but that's okay. There are an awful lot of books in the world.
As the emails came in, it was soon obvious that a great number of them featured a series of books called 'The Raven Boys Cycle' by Maggie Stiefvater.
Judging by the number of fans doing art for them, they were extremely popular, but completely unknown to me. Who, or what, were the raven boys? Curious, I downloaded a sample to my kindle. Read it. Then bought the book.
The Raven Boys is High Fantasy, no getting away from that. It's no use attempting to read it unless you're comfortable with searches for lost, medieval Welsh kings (in 21st Century America!) You have to be at ease with ley lines, talking trees and shifting world boundaries. If any or all of that just strikes you as daft, then the book is not for you.
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Book 2, The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
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The heroine is Blue, brought up by a struggling single mother, her father having disappeared soon after her birth. (Well, life as a small-town family man was never going to suit him, since it turns out he was...No, no, I can't say. It would be an outrageous Spoiler.)
Blue comes from an unusual household altogether. Her mother is a psychic, making her living by giving 'psychic readings' over the telephone and by tarot cards. She also shares a house and business with several other psychics, all women. They're all disappointed that Blue has no psychic gift-- though she does seem to amplify that of others.
Blue's mother and her friends have predicted, as it says on the book's cover, that if Blue kisses her 'true love', he will die. This has decided Blue that having anything to do with boys isn't worth the trouble. (One way of making sure you don't have to worry about your teenage daughter, I suppose.)In their small Virginia town, there is a very exclusive and expensive boys' school, for the sons of the wealthy, called the Aglionby Academy. (This fictional American school is named after a small, but real, village in Cumbria, England. The name's Norse, and means 'a river,' agl, near a farm, by. - But, then, Maggie Stiefvater seems to be an enthusiastic Anglophile, extremely well versed in British folklore, myth and tea-drinking habits.)
The (mostly) rich boys attending Aglionby Academy wear a uniform which has a raven on its badge, and so are known locally (and somewhat resentfully) as 'the raven boys.'
One of these boys, the 17-year-old Richard Campbell Gansey III, is not only wealthy, but completely obsessed with finding Owain Glyndwr, the Welsh king (spelt as 'Glendower' throughout the book.) Gansey believes that Glyndwr's body was brought to Virginia, America, to save it from being defiled by the English. (As if we would, say my English ancestors; while my Welsh ancestors grimace and give side-eye.)
According to this legend, Glyndwr is buried somewhere in Virginia but, like many heroes, is not dead but sleeping, waiting to be found and woken.
Gansey, having dedicatedly researched this, believes that if he can find a certain important ley-line and 'awaken' it, he can find the king. On waking, the king will grant him a wish.
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Book 3, Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater
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The eccentric Gansey doesn't live at the school, but has bought an old industrial building nearby, where he's set up home. It provides him with privacy and plenty of room to keep his computers and all his occult research.
He has invited some close friends to live with him. There is the difficult Ronan, aggressive and violent, rarely going to any classes or doing any work, but dedicatedly and tenderly raising a raven chick, which must be fed every four hours.
There's Noah. After shaking hands with Noah, someone tells him that his hands are very cold. Well, says Noah, he has been dead for seven years. And people think he's joking...
And there's Adam, who refuses to move in to Gansey's building, no matter how hard Gansey tries to persuade him.
Adam is a rarity: a raven boy who isn't rich. He's 'trailer-trash' who won a scholarship, and self-consciously wears an old, frayed and faded, second-hand uniform. He has made friends, but is always uneasily aware of how wealthy those friends are and how easy their money makes life for them.
Since his scholarship doesn't cover all his expenses, Adam works two or three jobs outside school hours, as well as studying hard to maintain his excellent grades. He's always exhausted, but adamantly refuses to allow his rich friends ever to place him under any obligation, however slight.
This bothers Gansey a great deal because, as if Adam's work-load wasn't enough, he often comes to school with visible bruises after another beating from his father, who thinks that any money Adam earns should be given to him, not spent on text-books.
Gansey, in urging Adam to move into his building, is trying to give him a safe haven, where he could study in peace. But Adam continues to insist on sorting out his own problems.
These 'raven boys' meet Blue when Gansey comes to her home, to consult her psychic mother on possible leads to sleeping Welsh kings. Shortly after that, Gansey accidentally insults Blue at the pizza parlour where she works as a waitress after school.
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Book 4, The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater
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Gansey is a bit of a mother-hen, always trying to sort things out for everyone else. On discovering that Adam thinks Blue is attractive, Gansey immediately asks her to join him and his friends at their table, so she and Adam can get acquainted.
Blue, determined not to ever fall in love, and also resentful of the raven boys' ease and wealth, says bluntly that she's working and doesn't have time to sit around chatting.
Gansey then offers to pay her to come and talk to his friend. Blue is incensed.
Gansey, innocently trying to be helpful, can't understand why she's so angry. As he sees it, if the problem is that she'd lose pay, well, no matter, he would make sure she wouldn't be out of pocket.
(Adam, meanwhile, who didn't ask Gansey to speak to Blue on his behalf, hides his face in his hands with embarrassment. It's a good example of why he doesn't want his out-of-touch rich friends doing him favours.)
But having met the raven boys, and freely exchanged points of view with them, Blue is drawn into their search for Glyndwr. And she is attracted to Adam, which is... complicated. Because, Gansey.
The Raven Boys is a densely and skilfully plotted novel with many vivid characters, and Maggie Stiefvater's prose is beautiful, smoothly sweeping you along, whether describing Gansey's untidy, cluttered home or the depths of eerie woods where the seasons change with your breathing.
That beautiful prose is witty and dryly amusing too. It often made me smile, and even laugh.
There are talking trees. Trees, moreover, which converse in Latin, so it's lucky that Latin is a subject that moody, aggressive Ronan excels in. -- Maggie Stiefvater seems to have a thing for languages. One of the best characters in Dream Thieves is a hitman who likes to read and translate Anglo-Saxon poetry in his spare moments between assassinations.
The characters are very different people, but they're all well understood by their author and their struggles with their own natures and the situations life has dumped them in (sleeping Welsh kings, ley lines, magical forests, savage dream-creatures and all) are vividly described.
As I have Welsh, Irish and English ancestry, and a Scots partner, I tend to regard all British folk-lore as MINE, so keep off or I will set Padfoot on you. I usually dislike American books that dare to muscle in on it...
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But I have to admit, I thoroughly enjoyed and admired The Raven Boys. Despite probably being about five times the age it was written for.
I'll call Padfoot off and allow Ms. Stiefvater across the border.
So, thank you, Pinterest! I doubt I would have come across this book without Pinterest's intervention.
And Maggie Stiefvater: she's due some thanks too.
Post-Script: This blog was originally written on reading the first book in the 'Cycle', The Raven Boys. Since then, I've read the others, and I have to say, my admiration has increased. I admire the clever, complex plots, their wonderful characterisations, their over-the-top audacity and bravado. Their originality. Their vim.
As I read, I kept wondering: Were all four books planned out from the beginning? -- That would be quite a feat in itself -- especially to combine such imaginative chutzpah with cold planning.
Or, was the first book written without knowing that there would be a demand for others? In that case, the high-wire acrobatics of plot and character would have had to be invented and managed from book to book. If so, my mind boggles and I tip my hat.
These books certainly won't be to everyone's taste, but if you like fast-paced, whirling plots, with vivid, loveable characters, plus the high-fantasy of other-wordly magic, sleeping kings and night horrors entering this world from dreams -- well, you may enjoy these books as much as I did.
Find out about Susan Price's books here:--
https://www.susanpriceauthor.com/
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