The Raven Cycle (The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King &a

The Raven Cycle 

(The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, The Raven King & Opal)

By Maggie Stiefvater

I was reluctant to read a book about a group of boys, but the dream elements in The Raven Cycle echoed some of the themes in my own book so I decided it would be valuable research. I tend to eschew male protagonists because I surfeited on a diet of them growing up when I longed to read about intelligent, daring, creative women.

ButThe Raven Cycle not only boasts a menagerie of multidimensional nuanced male characters, but also fierce, dynamic, wild females as well. I am so glad that Maggie Stiefvater lured me in with her brilliant premise, lyrical prose and unexpected landscape so that I could appreciate this gorgeous gritty tapestry of teen male kinship (and dare I say the sensuality of cars?) through not just a trilogy, but a quartet of books - plus a bonus short story. Oh, and for all of us that curse the end of a good series, guess what? There is a spin-off called The Dreamer Trilogy which I am enjoying now narrated by the brilliantly pliant Will Patten.

Blue Sergeant chronicles the names of the dead as the pass on the ley line each year. A seemingly ungifted seer in a house of talented female clairvoyants, Blue never seems to “see” anything until she sees the ghost of Gansey. This encounter catapults Blue into an adventure with a group of misfit prep school boys in search of a legend king.

With the kind of grand reveals that make a reader do a double take, Stiefvater builds a wholly unique world full of fantastical nightmares and earnest possibility that exists just a stumble away from our own.

Written with the intelligence of an adult but the poetry and wisdom that we lose as we age, this southern gothic tarot phantasm has the imagination of Erin Morgenstern and the dark possible magic of Melissa Albert’s The Hazel Wood.

So, let’s hear it for the boys, and for an author who has rendered such vivid multidimensional heroes - and heroines - to add to the canon of YA literature.