[SPOILERS] The Raven Cycle - The Raven King is out

[kairparavel]

Anyone else reading the last book in Maggie Stiefvater's series? I started it last night and am about 5 chapters in. 

 

Will Gansey live? 

[lady narcissa]

I am reading it but it's slow going as I have a lot going on and have been only able to read a few chapters a night.  I'm probably about the same place you are with my reading.

My gut feeling with no spoilers is I'm not going to love it.  I absolutely loved loved the first book, hated the second and felt the third brought it back to some middle ground. I suspect this last book will bring back some book two stuff I didn't like. But at this point I'm determined to see this series out.

[kairparavel]

8 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

I am reading it but it's slow going as I have a lot going on and have been only able to read a few chapters a night.  I'm probably about the same place you are with my reading.

My gut feeling with no spoilers is I'm not going to love it.  I absolutely loved loved the first book, hated the second and felt the third brought it back to some middle ground. I suspect this last book will bring back some book two stuff I didn't like. But at this point I'm determined to see this series out.

I think maybe this will be the case as well. I hope the conclusion is satisfying even if the journey is not. (and it may well be great, still just getting into things at this point)

[Xray the Enforcer]

Funny. I loved books 1 & 2, and then had a very hard time with book 3.

Haven't started the latest one yet. Been too busy and distracted.

[kairparavel]

I liked book two a lot. But I like Ronan a lot.

[lady narcissa]

Yeah I am not a Ronan fan.  I didn't mind him in Book One as he was just one of a cast of characters.  But then when he took over and completely dominated Book Two, that is when he began to annoy me.  I liked Book Three because it moved back to the assortment of characters with less focus on Ronan.  Right now with Book Four I find myself lingering over the chapters with everyone else but Ronan and then sort of fast forwarding over his dreams.  Characters like Gansey typically interest me more than characters like Ronan.

[kairparavel]

I'm a quarter of the way in and we've just met a new character(s). AND I found their/it annoying! And I just finished an Adam chapter and I think

whatever the evil was that Piper and the aunt encountered in the cave is trying to possess Adam using his bond with Cabeswater

[lady narcissa]

I got to about that point last night too.  I agree about the new characters, it was okay adding them through Book 3 but by Book 4 it should be streamlining and eliminating them, not adding more.  It's already a fairly large cast.

As for your spoiler...do we need to use [sss] in a marked Spoiler thread?  None the less I'm not sure what to think about that just yet.  I'll see what more of it we see in these next few chapters.

Interview with Maggie about the series.  Nothing spoilery.

http://www.vulture.com/2016/04/maggie-stiefvater-says-ya-is-a-bullshit-label.html

[kairparavel]

I spent 7 hours finishing it tonight. Party on a Friday!  Anyways, I'm kind of lukewarm on it overall though I really enjoyed parts. I also really didn't enjoy parts, particularly dangling points brute forced in.

 

I think spoiler tags can be optional as the title indicates they will be part of the discussion. I just did it because the book only came out this week. 

[lady narcissa]

Well I finally finished and.....meh.  As an individual book I think it was a mess.  As a conclusion to a series...well it does cover and end most things.  But only the last 30% of the book.  The first 70% was just all over the place and completely unnecessary.  I don't even know how to discuss this.  I guess I'll just start with some basic topics.

HERE BE SPOILERS

All the new people.  WTF.  Here is a series already bloated with characters.  So I guess let's just add a bunch of new ones?  I'll give her some credit, I had no problem keeping track of everyone.  But they were completely unnecessary.  Piper's father and the other two...what point did they serve?  Orphan Girl was also just pointless.  Henry was fun but his role could have gone to someone else and if he was going to be here in the end, bring him more in the beginning of the series.  It's seemed like some kind of pandering to the tumblr crowd who had been complaining about how white washed the series was.

Gansey's death.  Of course he was going to die and be resurrected.  But after all that buildup about it, it was completely dull.  And what is the price he pays for it?  What are the consequences of coming back?  I guess we will have to wait for Gansey/Blue/Henry The GAP Year.

The Demon.  It looked like A WASP?  What the hell?  That was beyond ridiculous and completely diminished it.  One of the inspirations for this series was Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising - the most evil character in that series looks like Jason Isaacs (okay completely my interpretation but that is how he looks when I read it!)  The most scary evil is the seductively beautiful evil.  (Think the Darkling in Leigh Bardugo's series.)  It would have worked so much better if the Demon had manifested a human form instead of that silly insect form.  Would have made the scenes with Piper and Neeve so much more interesting.  And it just dies and disappears when Gansey dies?

Adam and Ronan.  This felt like complete pandering to the tumblr crowd as well.

Gansey and Blue...I felt like Blue and Henry had more chemistry.  I see some interesting times ahead on that Gap year.

Adam and his parents.  What was the point of that scene at the end?????  Completely unnecessary.  Instead of giving us some more details about what happens to Noah who was one of the main characters and important to everyone from book one, let's get a few pointless pages.

Glendower.  This was a hugely disappointing aspect to the story.  On the one hand it was almost comical that he was dead and didn't come back.  (But absolutely completely ridiculous that he is in a cave beneath a house in I guess suburban DC somewhere.)  But on the other hand, it was the biggest letdown.  I think it is at the heart of my disappointment with this series in general.

There was something in the first book for me that just disappeared from the series and was never to be seen again.  When I read the first book I just loved it so much I wanted to hug it and share it with everyone I knew who loved books.  I loved the characters.  I loved the details.  I loved the promise of magic and adventures and friendship/love.  The books that are cited as inspiration for this series are all ones that I love in totality and have all those ingredients and maintain them throughout.  I didn't expect this series to completely replicate them in execution but did expect it to do so in spirit.  But instead of making me feel sad and yet delighted as those other series did when I came to the end and ever likely to reread and revisit them frequently, this one just made me feel relieved that the series was over and I could just let it go and move on from it.

Did I like anything about it?  I liked that most things were resolved even though I wasn't too keen on how they were.  Glad that Neeve was seen again before being finished off.  I found the idea of the Unmaking and Cabeswater coming apart interesting.  I still find Gansey an interesting character.  And I still love that first book.  I'm just going to have to find some way to reconcile it with the rest of the series.

[kairparavel]

 

21 hours ago, lady narcissa said:

Basically everything you said

SPOILERS

You have hit on almost every aspect that didn't sit well with me. The two big ones being Piper's father/uncles and the WASP. I was completely expecting a malevolent, attractive form of evil as well. And instead..we got that. W.T.F. And the whole Laumonier thing - make it three weird characters just so one can kill Piper? What? So much of that feels heavily edited. 

Artemus - another added character that felt like such a waste of time, except to explain to Blue why she liked that tree so much.

Glendower - how did he die but this batty daughter didn't? I'm ok with him dying if Gwenllian doesn't exist. But otherwise, why? What? And why is he so much further away from the ley line? ETA So maybe it was proximity to/from the ley line that caused his death/allowed his daughter and others to live.

Noah - just.. gone. Thanks. No chance for goodbyes or anything. 

Adam and Ronan - this sort of felt shoe-horned in, but only because early in the book Adam is still checking Blue out. On the other hand, Ronan was the only person who seemed to accept him unconditionally and I think he gravitated towards that. Maybe it isn't as shoe-horned as it was written. 

And so was Matthew also unmade in the end? Is that why Ronan was alone at the Barns with Orphan Girl? Some things were resolved, some things not. It feels like there will be more to tell with these characters, particularly Ronan because he's really the only remarkable one left seeing as no one else is really a magician anymore.

After looking back at all the books in sequence and the overarching story, Gansey et al really feel like they are part of Ronan's story, even though you are led to believe it's about Gansey's quest. I will say, if there was one thing I did like is how all the characters did grow up and evolve throughout the series. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

I'm a few chapters in and enjoying the fuck outta this book!

[lady narcissa]

24 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

 

SPOILERS...EVERYTHING...

ARTEMUS!  How did I forget...oh I guess that is because he WAS HARDLY IN THE BOOK!  What the hell was up with that?!??!  Awesome long slumbering sleepers at last awoken only to hang out in an attic and a tree?!?!?!  That was a letdown.  And yeah, how did they survive but Glendower died?  There was that comment about how maybe Artemus screwed it up but that was about it.  So Artemus experimented on Glendower first, screwed up, and then put himself to sleep?  And now what are they going to do?

And Mr. Grey...where did you go?!?!?!

Hmmm not sure about Matthew.  I guess my initial impression without rereading and paying more attention is that Gansey died soon enough to prevent his unmaking?  And that he is still in DC.  At least that is what I am going to choose to believe.

26 minutes ago, kairparavel said:

After looking back at all the books in sequence and the overarching story, Gansey et al really feel like they are part of Ronan's story, even though you are led to believe it's about Gansey's quest. I will say, if there was one thing I did like is how all the characters did grow up and evolve throughout the series. 

Interesting observation.  And would explain why I lost interest in this series.  I was interested in Gansey and his quest.  Ronan and his dreams always felt like interlopers to the story set up by the first book.  But the things that seemed instrumental to Glendower and the quest such as Cabeswater turned out to be all around Ronan.

Also, what is with the title - The Raven King....its not until about 70% through the book that the phrase is finally used.  And he isn't even in it.

 

I can't wait for X-Ray to finish.  X-Ray if you are enjoying the first few chapters of the book, I suspect you are going to have a vastly different reaction to this book

[kairparavel]

5 minutes ago, lady narcissa said:

Also, what is with the title - The Raven King....its not until about 70% through the book that the phrase is finally used.  And he isn't even in it.

I can't wait for X-Ray to finish.  X-Ray if you are enjoying the first few chapters of the book, I suspect you are going to have a vastly different reaction to this book

 

re: Raven King - I think that was Gansey. The Aglionby Raven boys and Blue - he was their king. Also, the part about the king and his magicians from Henry. I don't think Glendower was the Raven King at all. Not really. More bait and switch.

 

I too am curious how X-Ray will find the conclusion. You guys are the reason I started reading the series! 

 

(sidebar, I bought a Kindle version of A Court of Mist and Fury today because I couldn't bear the wait for a library loan)

[lady narcissa]

11 hours ago, kairparavel said:

re: Raven King - I think that was Gansey. The Aglionby Raven boys and Blue - he was their king. Also, the part about the king and his magicians from Henry. I don't think Glendower was the Raven King at all. Not really. More bait and switch.

Ugh. Hate the bait and switch.  Have to process that.

(But *sidebar* ME TOO!  I preordered and it downloaded earlier in the evening on Monday night.  I was so excited!  RHYSAND!)

[Xray the Enforcer]

I have a lot of feelings, many of them conflicted. But one thing I really disagree on is Adam and Ronan. That's been in the books since the beginning, and is the natural progression of their arc. Speaking from my own experiences, there's absolutely nothing weird to me about Adam checking out Blue, but then hooking up with Ronan. It makes total sense from a character aspect (Adam will glom onto anyone who shows him a shred of regard/affection), and also how I know how I approached my own feelings when I was Adam's age. 

I hated the whole Piper arc to begin with, so expanding it with her bizarre triplet fathers was IMO a giant turd floating in the punch bowl.

[Xray the Enforcer]

Also, and this is my own personal preference for narrative -- I dislike it when books wrap things up neatly. I don't need a last goodbye from Noah because...it doesn't always happen that way in real life. I love the ambiguous non-ending, and the lack of complete resolution, so long as the arc themselves make some kind of sense. I have to contend with them all the time in my own work, because I don't write obituaries. There's never closure in my work, just always the next point in the progression. 

[Mr. X]

I liked it a lot, but then I think Ronan is a fantastic character. Yes, there were too many new characters thrown into the mix, but I thought it closed the series nicely. I hated getting to Union Square on the train all of last week, because it meant I had to stop reading for a few minutes while I made the transfer to a different line.

And while Noah didn't get any sort of big group goodbye (can you group hug a ghost?), I liked the closure of him being the one who gave Gansey the message that set him out on the quest in the first place. 

[Xray the Enforcer]

So, things that I didn't like about the book (most of which also applies to the series):

Random brand-new characters that just happen to propel the plot forward. (Sorry Henry and Henry's mom. You would have been a cool addition had you been introduced in, oh, Book Two or so. WTF, Hooved Girl? Why are you here?) This, I felt, was a problem throughout the series, by the by. The way that antagonists were introduced -- brand new book, brand new antagonist! -- was really cheap and jarring. Book three, with that bullshit addition of Colin and Piper, was where I almost hit the eject button on the whole series. Especially when the antagonists are so. fucking. boring. So when we got to rando triplets, I was rolling my eyes so hard.

Also, WTF is up with all of our Snidely Whiplashes being from Boston? I mean, Boston is a bullshit town, but come the fuck on. Surely at least one of those miserable shitfucks went to Yale and then migrated to a loft in Tribeca.

Artemus was a general waste of time.

Piper and her entire arc was a specific waste of time.

The pacing of the book was off, although I'd argue that the entire series has had that problem. I love the loping, slow burn. But then we have these frantic build-ups/denouments during the last 10-15% of the book and they are not given enough time/space to develop. And so we get Piper being shot by her rando dad, and the demon magically disappearing, and Gansey comes back to life. And...curtain. All in the span of, like, 20 pages.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Cycle is Coming to Television