Reviews

The more I think about this book, the more I find in it and the better I like it. I stood up and cheered when Adam told Gansey off for his wealthy bullshit ways, I laughed and cried through Ronan's weird pseudo-friendship with Kavinsky, and I thought Noah did a pretty good job of being the token peripheral ghost friend. Stars for everybody! Also, the audiobook is a-ma-zing. Truly a phenomenal narrator!

I still think it could have been shorter and maybe the pacing in the first two thirds adjusted? I quibbled a bit with the Orla-as-sexuality-foil for Blue part because Blue still feels the most underdeveloped out of the gang. Her defining characteristic is that she has this forbidden love thing (but she's also a "not like other girls" girl, of course!!1!), which is Fated to Be Heterosexual, so she spends a lot of time thinking about whether she's in love with any of these boys. The boys, of course, are focused on Very Serious Things, like a quest to find a king! Extracting stuff from dreams! Learning how to work with Cabeswater! Being a ghost!, so the fact that Blue is worrying about her true love bullshit 80% of the time (other 10% is worrying about college, 10% carrying emotional water for the emotionally constipated boys) rubs me the wrong way—but I will happily wait for more development for her story.

Enough on my Blue woes. As the story focused more closely on Ronan, I was so impressed and moved by the way Stiefvater wrote his relationships with Kavinsky (overall, with a big caveat discussed below) and the other Lynch brothers. Disaffected rich teens are still very tiresome characters, but these weren’t as reflexively spendy as Gansey, so it annoyed me less, haha. Ah, Gansey. Even though he could literally die from anaphylaxis with a bee sting at any moment, I have trouble dredging up positive feelings for him. Did he ever consider maybe the rebel king who's been dead (oh sorry, sleeping