Title: The Raven King (Raven Cycle #4)
Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: YA/Fantasy
Date Read: 26/04/2016 – 29/04/2016
Rating: ★★★
Review:
I am honestly going to struggle to write this review. As with the first book, I had trouble deciding what to rate this one, though this time the debate was between 2 and 3, rather than 3 and 4. I’m feeling generous, so I went higher.
I had hoped for something really epic to conclude this series. I know that a lot of people felt this book achieved that, but I found that while I liked several parts of it, a lot of it ended up anti-climactic and unsatisfying. I think my biggest issue is that Maggie Stiefvater tried to do an awful lot of things in not very many pages, and thus it all fell a bit flat.
Cabeswater is dying. It is affecting Adam because of his pledge to it in an earlier book, and it is affecting Ronan in his dreams. The only way to save the forest is for someone to willingly sacrifice themselves on the ley line. Meanwhile, Piper Greenmantle thinks she is in control of things and is drawing more dangerous people to Henrietta than ever before.
Between Cabeswater dying, Piper’s shenanigans (I’m trying not to be too spoilery about that, because it is quite integral to the book’s events), the search for Glendower continuing, new characters being introduced, Blue learning some strange and interesting things about her heritage, our main characters finding out about a black market of magical items that their friends and families have been involved in… it was a lot to cover, and too much for any one of these events to really be given adequate time for exploration.
There were also several loose ends that never really got tied up. Does anyone even know what happened to Noah?
This all makes me a bit sad, because I have been recommending this series, but I think I will now have to recommend it with the caveat that the ending falls a bit flat.
This is a link to my review of this book on GoodReads, where I’ve also noted a lot of specific things that bothered me under a spoiler tag. If you’ve already read the book, or if spoilers don’t bother you, go check that out, too.
A Keyboard and an Open Mind 
I finished this book this morning and wrote my review this afternoon (posting tomorrow), and I basically had the same experience as you. I was entirely underwhelmed. 😦
And good point about Noah!
I’ll check out your spoilery bits on Goodreads 🙂
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I’m sorry it didn’t work for you either, but also glad I’m not the only one who felt that way. The number of five star reviews on the GR page was a bit overwhelming (though I can write a good proportion of those off as Ronan/Adam shippers who were understandably happy about certain events). I’ll keep an eye out for your review!
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I haven’t read this book but I’ve read some of Maggie’s works before- I’d love to hear some more of your book reccomendations! Feel free to check out my site, I don’t have (m)any book reviews now but I’d love to add that to my site.
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Hi, thanks for stopping by! If you’re into YA, from the books I’ve read this year, I would recommend Seraphina by Rachel Hartman and The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heigl (I’m not sure if that’s how her surname is spelled, but should be close enough for you to find it if you like).
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