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The Raven King (The Raven Cycle, #4)

Maggie Stiefvater

Start date: April 1, 2022

Finish date: April 30, 2022

Discussion: Book of the Month

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What Members Thought

Oct 21, 2015 Melanie rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-print, signed

Wow, what a crazy ending to a fantastic series. This book definitely has a lot in the way of feels (whether they be Ronan/Adam or Gansey/Blue). (view spoiler) I binged this series over the past two days and it was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend marathoning these books, as I feel they are best read all together. I don't know how well the series would have gone over for me if I'd had to wait a year for each bo ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2020 Ashley rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: faves, ya-fantasy

I really loved this book so so much but something did keep me from giving it a five stars. I think it was the fact that I felt more could have been added between the last chapter and the epilogue. The ending just felt so abrupt.

But even with that I still loved this book so much and I'm going to miss this series and the characters I have grown attached too. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

May 29, 2017 Natalie rated it liked it

Shelves: paranormal, young-adult, lgbtq, magic, mythology, fantasy, romance, urban-fantasy

After being immersed in this series for weeks, I was seriously looking forward to seeing how the series ended... And to be honest, I'm kinda disappointed :/

The style of writing was beautiful, the characters still incredible and an overarching plot with so much potential but it just... fell flat for me compared to the others.

There were just so many things that bugged me... (view spoiler) After being immersed in this series for weeks, I was seriously looking forward to seeing how the series ended... And to be honest, I'm kinda disappointed :/

The style of writing was beautiful, the characters still incredible and an overarching plot with so much potential but it just... fell flat for me compared to the others.

There were just so many things that bugged me... (view spoiler)
...and so many others that I really don't want to go into because otherwise I feel my rating will go down even more :|

To be honest, I'm not really sure what to rate this overall... I had such high hopes after falling in love with the first book, and yet I seemed to enjoy each sequential book slightly less than the previous. I was really hoping there was going to be some grand finale where it all made sense and everything was brilliant again but... no luck.

I did however love the development of Adam as a character, and the writing style continued to be beautiful. So for that I'm going to give 3 stars - I enjoyed it overall, but I just feel too disappointed to really give a good mark :/ ...more

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Sep 23, 2022 Celia Buell (semi hiatus) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorite-series, friendship, series, romance, family, favorites, wish-list, fantasy, high-school, read-audio-tbr-print

OMG what an end to the series!

I loved everything about this. I feel like everything that was hanging over the series as a whole, including aspects introduced from the very beginning, were wrapped up so perfectly and all major plot holes were closed, although not completely in ways you would expect.

There was so much going on in this. Like, first of all, Adam and Ronan. Their's could have been the kind of relationship that you read too much into, and it was impossible to tell where it was going un OMG what an end to the series!

I loved everything about this. I feel like everything that was hanging over the series as a whole, including aspects introduced from the very beginning, were wrapped up so perfectly and all major plot holes were closed, although not completely in ways you would expect.

There was so much going on in this. Like, first of all, Adam and Ronan. Their's could have been the kind of relationship that you read too much into, and it was impossible to tell where it was going until they just kind of went for it, and I loved that. It was somewhere between a slow burn and all at once, somewhere between enemies to lovers and friends to lovers, keeping the tropes and breaking them at the same time. I also appreciated that their story wasn't a coming out story, and the shock wasn't that two guys were together, but that they got together. There was no questioning about sexuality, there was no labels, there was just them. Also, what a way to give Adam a rebound and end the love triangle with Gansey and Blue.

Then there was Henry Ching. I can't recall many books where a single person is integrated in an already established friend group through their own actions after the story and the friend group itself are pretty much set in stone. This was a fresh break from a lot of modern fantasy, and from a lot of friendship and found family novels in general. Although I do wish that it had been a girl instead of another boy. Though I can't imagine what this would look like, because Henry is so essentially Henry.

Then there was the whole piece with Gansey and Noah and Glendower. I won't say too much so as not to spoil it, but that all wrapped up in a very interesting way that I did not expect.

Once again, Will Patton went above and beyond with the narration and the different voices for every single character. It almost makes me not want to read the print books someday as a reread, because those expectations would be lowered so much. The only thing I will say about listening to the different voices is that sometimes it ruins the surprise when you're not supposed to know who's speaking initially, but the sheer depth of the voices in general makes up for the lack of that element of surprise. In general, listening to all the books in quick succession also made the series run together for me somewhat, and in some ways that coherence was really good because I could allow myself to just be there. I'm hoping this listening experience hasn't cast too much over-expectations on all other audiobooks, because this was pretty amazing.

I'm not sure whether I plan to ask for the other three books for Christmas, because at some point I would like to read them as well as just listening to them, but I'm definitely going to revisit them. I'm also not sure if or when I'll read Opal, the follow-up book, though it will probably be soon if it is an audiobook (especially if by the same narrator). It might take a while for me to recover from this series in general, though. ...more

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Aug 13, 2020 Diana rated it really liked it

It was still good, but a little disappointing. The author took a really long time to get to where they were going with the story, so there was very little left for the ending. I do feel it was a bit rushed and I was left with some questions. But, it was still a good read.

1 like · Like · see review