The Raven Boys

I'm kind of mad at myself for putting off reading Stiefvater for so long. I've had [b:Shiver 6068551 Shiver (The Wolves of Mercy Falls, #1) Maggie Stiefvater http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328839272s/6068551.jpg 6244926] sitting on my bookshelf for close to a year, but never got around to it. I only picked up The Raven Boys because it was available at the library when another book I wanted wasn't. I had been hunting for a certain atmosphere for the fall months. Something ghostly and witchy. I had no idea that The Raven Boys was pretty much exactly what I was looking for, it just kind of happened that way.I love the way Stiefvater writes, and am incredibly jealous. Her writing is smart and new and evocative all at once. I was trying to leaf through it to find some of my favorite lines, and pretty much the whole first part of the book is packed with gorgeous prose. The best parts are the introductions to the characters. “Ronan and Declan Lynch were undeniably brothers, with the same dark brown hair and sharp nose, but Declan was solid where Ronan was brittle. Declan's wide jaw and smile said, Vote for me while Ronan's buzzed head and thin mouth warned that this species was poisonous.”Admittedly, Ronan gets some of the best ones. He's easily the most dramatic of characters, and while we never get his point of view, he's on the cover of [b:The Dream Thieves 17347389 The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2) Maggie Stiefvater http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1367060081s/17347389.jpg 21598446] (and I have this image in my head of Chainsaw, his pet raven, all grown up and landing on his shoulder in a flourish of wind and black feathers. Real and unreal), so we have a lot to look forward to.Stiefvater is that kind of YA writer who gets young people so well that she goes slightly beyond their feasibility. I knew exactly what she was talking about when she references Blue's vanity, how she carefully cultivates her weirdness, because I did something similar as a young person, but I was certainly not that aware of it. Her characters are so dynamic, so vividly drawn, and they feel so real that it's like they're sitting next to you, but at same time you wonder, in what awful universe would these people find each other? It's real and unreal, the way fiction should be, in my opinion.This story moves in a strange way. It's not slow, and it's not fast, but at one point I realized that I was more than half way through the book and not sure how I got there, because I had no idea where it was going. While the motivations of the characters were clear, the major conflict was not. It wasn't even clear where the major antagonist was going to come from, if there was one at all. Would it be something supernatural? Something human? Is Cabeswater, the magical forest place they find on the ley line, something to be feared or protected? The book spends so much time contemplating what's going to happen between Blue and Gansey and they're supposed destiny, that the boy that actually is the most pivotal to the story goes mostly unnoticed until the very end. It's a strange unpredictable story and I really really liked it.The atmosphere is delicious. You can feel the magic dripping off the page, and the mystery is like chilly little fingers running up your spine when you least expect it. When you think you've got a hold of it, it twists and squirms out of your hands (Ronan! Ronaaaaan!), and proves you're as good as Jon Snow. And I want more.