A review by mickeypenis
Greywaren by Maggie Stiefvater

4.0

Wow. What to say about this book... I guess I'll start with the fact that the Raven Cycle changed me fundamentally as a person - Maggie and her writing, for better or for worse, has had a major part of shaping who I am. No book could replicate what I felt when I read those four books for the first time. So I was actually really hesitant about this trilogy, especially because Ronan was so deeply deeply important to me. But after finishing this last book, I can say that I am happy with the way it ended. This trilogy grapples with a lot of what I am also grappling with - I, like our beloved characters, am not in highschool anymore, where things were wild and almost magic, but have been plunged into the essentially alienating experience of young adulthood, where everything kinda sucks and the world is going to shit and my relationships are changing and things I thought were true are no longer. Greywaren specifically deals with collective apathy for the state of the world and plumbs the depths of family trauma - two things that are very present for me currently. Of course, because I am human and not a work of fiction, my problems will not end the way Ronan and Declan's do, nicely wrapped in a bow, but that is ok - it was enough to see myself in the pages. This book brought me to tears multiple times. I'm gonna miss these characters, but I'm also glad it's over - it's time to move forward.