Once upon a time it began with
"There are only two reasons a non-seer would she a spirit on St Mark's Eve....
Either you're his true love....or you killed him."
And then Blue’s life changed forever because she will either kill Gansey or he will be her one true love or both.
The thing I really LOVE about this series is the ‘Otherness’ of it. Strange things happen all the time, every important character in the series has something different, unique and intriguing about them. I shift from loving Gansey the most, to Blue, then to Noah, from Piper to the Gray Man and then another character just steals the show *cough* Persephone *cough*. I’m stuck in a section of a tangled spider web, trying to seeing where all the strands meet and wondering where the spider is that wants to devour me. Because let’s face it if Gansey dies and Blue kills him my insides will feel like spider mush.
The friendship between Gansey, Blue, Adam and Ronan is something I adore in this book. I love how they all look out for one another and help each other. Sure they bicker and argue at times but really the dynamic between the four of them is awesome. They have all helped each other become more than they were before.
--- "But what she didn’t realize about Blue and her boys was that they were all in love with one another. She was no less obsessed with them than they were with her, or one another, analyzing every conversation and gesture, drawing out every joke into a longer and longer running gag, spending each moment either with one another or thinking about when next they would be with one another."
The quest is still to find Glendower, more important now than ever since Blue’s mother is underground with him somewhere. Time is running out, Gansey could die at any time and the people who know are starting to think the only way to save him would be to wake the Welsh king and get the favor.
This book also plays on one of my guilty pleasures of the forbidden love. I ship Gansey and Blue so much and there is just enough romance between them in this to keep me on the edge with them. I want them to kiss so badly and at the same time I don’t. It is so delicious I could eat it with a spoon.
--- She had thought it was such a simple thing to avoid kissing someone when she’d been with Adam. Her body had never known what to do. Now it knew. Her mouth didn’t care that it was cursed. She turned to Gansey.
Blue,” he warned, but his voice was chaotic.
This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey. She said, “I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.”
But it isn’t just the romance it is the friendships and the journey to find the King. The boys keep becoming more than they were before and I totally love the language Maggie Steifvater uses when she describe everything/everyone in this book.
--- There was something unfamiliar about him when he arrived in the Pig. Something ferocious about his eyes, some sort of bite in his faint smile. Something altogether hectic and unsettled. She stood on the ledge of his smile and looked over the edge. This wasn’t the Gansey she’d seen in the kitchen earlier; this was the Gansey she secretly called at night.
---- …it seemed impossible for all of Ronan to exist in one person. Adam was beginning to realize that he hadn’t known Ronan at all. Or rather, he had known part of him and assumed it was all of him
--- He had been wrong to come here alone. Why did he care if Gansey and Ronan saw this? They already knew. They knew everything about him. What a lie unknowable was. The only person who didn’t know Adam was himself
--- Blue’s sensible, pleasant expression was at odds with the fire that burned furiously inside. School was imminent, love was in the air, and Blue’s mother had vanished on some mysterious personal quest more than a month before, leaving behind her newly acquired assassin beau. Blue was a hurricane lurking just offshore.
The other thing I love are the women of 300 Fox way. I really want to be a fly on the wall in that house. It seems like it would be the most interesting place in the world to be at times. Living with those women would be insane, but I really love the feel of the house and how the women inside of it seem to be just on the edge of everything. The way they cryptically speak in riddles or half explanations is really one of my favorite parts of this entire series.
“Do you remember how I said that there were three sleepers, and Maura’s job was to not wake one of them, and your job was to wake one of the others? Remember how I didn’t say anything about the other one? I did not mean bring her to my kitchen.”
I don’t want to give too much away because I really love the way that Maggie Steifvater dishes out little clues along the way as to the bigger picture and even when some questions are answered others rise up. Every character in the series serves a purpose and belongs there. When she adds a new character you know that they are not there just for padding, they will have a purpose. And the new characters added in this installment shine just as brightly as The Gray Man did in The Dream Thieves. Piper and Gwenllian are the most notable additions, although there are a few more.
Gwenllian is a peculiar and fun addition. Her interactions with the women of 300 Fox way and the Gray man sometimes steal the page as you try to decipher her craziness
“Hello, handsome sword! Have you killed anyone today?”
“One sword knows another,” he told her mildly, placing his car keys in his pocket. “Have you killed anyone?”
She was so delighted that she turned off the vacuum cleaner so that her insane smile could be the loudest thing in the hall.
Gwelliian also seems to know something of magic and mirrors. She will definitely have a part to play in the next book as well and might have a few tricks up her sleeve to teach Blue along the way.
Piper might be crazy in a different way. A more dangerous kind of cray-cray and it seems like she will probably play a much bigger role in the next book. Piper is the wife of Greenmantle, the man who was pulling Mr. Gray’s strings in the last book. She is a very perplexing character and a full bundle of trouble.
--- He was so impressed with her ingenuity. He should not have been, really, because Piper was a very ingenious creature. It was just that she didn’t normally use her powers for good, and when she did, they usually weren’t pointed at him.
This is what I can say about this book. I loved every rollercoaster fun-filled moment of the ride. I am so happy that there was more time in spent in Cabeswater because that creepy forest that belongs on the Island in LOST is amazing. I laughed, I teared up, I pondered, I got lost in the language and metaphors, I highlighted 103 passages and read them over a few times. I’m even more in love with all of the characters in this world now than I was before and I am totally looking forward to listening to the audiobook when it comes out on Nov 1 and taking the journey all over again.
……AND THAT ENDING. She has done it again MS has left us hanging in such a weird place at the end that the next book can’t come out soon enough. I have no idea how she is going to wrap it up but I’m putting all my hope into MS that it is just as fantastic as all the books in this series have been.
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Reviews with images
When a book makes you feel like all the characters are your best friends
Where is Maura? If you guessed somewhere weird and creepy, you’d be correct. And the Raven Boys, Blue, the women of 300 Fox Way, and Mr.Gray are all on the hunt for her. As per usual, things get a whole lot more bizarre along the way — but they’re closer to finding Glendower more than ever. Will they finally find that old King? At the same time, Greenmantle, Mr.Gray’s ex-boss, is still dissatisfied with Mr.Gray not telling him where the Greywarren is. Now, Greenmantle and his wife, Piper, are coming to Henrietta — and are after Mr.Gray. Will Greenmantle and Piper get in the way of the characters’ search for Maura and Glendower? Will Maura find Butternut once and for all?This series is seriously amazing.Did the plot progress much in this book? No. Do I care even a little? No. I love all these characters so much I could read 800 pages of them going to the grocery store. I laughed out loud and smiled at this book so many times in public people probably thought I was crazy.I just love the way Stiefvater writes and I don’t even know how to describe it. She describes settings, moods, feelings, etc in such unique ways and it just makes so much sense. She also has this whimsical, magical style of writing that’s so entrancing I’ll go to read for 20 minutes and then not stop for two hours.Even the new characters in this book who are supposed to be the “bad guys” were so funny and interesting I couldn’t help but enjoy them. Greenmantle and Piper were such an oddly compatible couple.Speaking of the characters, the character development in this series is ~*insane*~. I feel like book one was a good introduction to everyone and their traits, and then book two focused moreso on Ronan and his issues, and now this book was set on Adam. I have not liked Adam at all in this series, but this book actually made me start to. He evolves a lot and makes a lot of realizations that I’ve been waiting for forever.We also get some parts of Gansey we’ve never seen before: anxious, unconfident Gansey. We also get to see a bit more Blue and Gansey which I love, of course. They’re so different yet so similar at the same time, and their late night phone calls and banter is just perfectAlso, Noah. I just love him and always disappointed we don’t get to see more of him. He’s so sweet and funny and…smudgy, as Maggie Stiefvater describes him. I’m still not even sure what the hell that means but at the same time I know exactly what that means.Even though much doesn’t happen in this book, it is still thoroughly enjoyable. There is still a lot of mystery and “oh my god!” moments. Also, there’s a lot of character development which is just as important since this is a very character driven book.I’m just in awe at how an author can make me love five fictional characters so much. This is a “paranormal-YA-fantasy” book yet I spent 90% of the time laughing because I’m like ‘Haha just Ronan being Ronan!’ or ‘Lol Blue and Gansey’s banter, so typical!’All in all…I just really love this series, and I highly recommend it
