For three superlative novels, author Maggie Stiefvater has entranced us with the story of a group of high school students searching for the lost tomb of Owen Glendower (or Owain ap Gruffydd or Owain Glyndŵr), the Welsh “raven king” who lead an uprising against the British in the early 15th century. The Raven King concludes their search.

Glendower was a real historical figure, a capable military leader whose revolt was initially successful but ultimately doomed to fail before superior British technology and naval power. When his rebellion collapsed in 1409, Glendower when into hiding and was never found by his enemies. Likewise, his final resting spot remains unknown and from this mystery has sprung legend. Like King Arthur, Glendower’s myth promises that he can be “awakened” from death under certain conditions, and this is the starting point for Stiefvater’s books.

The teens in Steifvater’s Raven Cycle books are searching for Glendower’s bones in rural Virginia where they believe the ancient Welsh hid them from the British. Each of the characters has certain attributes which assist in this quest. Richard “Dick” Gansy is the group’s leader and a gifted historian. Ronan Lynch is a troubled classmate who can pull objects from dreams and make them manifest in the real world. Blue Sargent may not be a psychic like her mother, but she can amplify supernatural phenomenon at will. Adam Parrish is the magician who has a special relationship with the local ley line, a naturally occurring geological feature tied to the paranormal. And Noah Churney is the ghostly classmate who was murdered years earlier by a teacher who was also looking for Glendower. 

Purported to be the last book in the series, The Raven King, brings this long and complex adventure to an end by pitting Gansy and his friends against a ruthless collector of supernatural items who's systematically destroying the magical realm they seek to protect. Having been stymied from finding Glendower in all the previous books, Gansy and the others are now working against the clock. Finding Glendower may be the only way to save not only their world, but Gansy’s life as it has long been foretold that he would die before year’s end.

Stiefvater is a gifted storyteller. She’s able to effortlessly create realistic dialogue, paint stunning imagery and evoke deep emotion. But sadly, I think The Raven King is the weakest book in this series for several reasons. First, I found Stiefvater’s prose to be overly-mannered compared to the other novels, as though she abandoned her more conversational tone for repetition and hyperbole. These devices became increasingly distracting as I progressed through its pages. In respect to plot, The Raven King offered neither the intimate character study of The Dream Thieves nor the colorful personalities and interactions depicted in The Raven Boys and Blue Lily, Lily Blue. At times, it felt like loose threads were quickly tied off rather than thoughtfully resolved. This was certainly the case with how the protagonists find Glendower’s tomb and how they deal with Gansy’s forecasted death. Though I can’t say Stiefvater cheats the reader by failing to resolve these storylines, their resolutions felt rushed and insufficient.

​While The Raven King was a disappointment in many ways, the world Stiefvater’s created in these novels is a place I would love to visit again. Fortunately, the last scene in the book leaves the door to future novels noticeably ajar. I, for one, hope we see these characters again.

RELATED: Reviews of The Raven Boys (novel and graphic novel) |Review of The Dream Thieves: The Raven Cycle Book 2  |  Review of Blue Lily, Lily Blue: The Raven Cycle Book 3 | Review of The Raven King: The Raven Cycle Book 4  |  Supernatural Book Collection | Paranormal Book Collection

The third installment in Maggie Stiefvater's popular Raven Cycle books, Blue Lily, Lily Blue, continues the story of a young woman named Blue Sargent, born to a family of psychics who befriends a group of privileged prep school boys as they search for a mythical king called Glendower. As unlikely as that premise may seem, these are consistently strong and believable young adult novels and this third installment does a great job of building on an ensemble of characters which may be some of the most engaging in young adult fiction. 

After dealing mostly with the character of Ronan Lynch in the preceding book The Dream Thieves, this outing reestablishes Blue Sargent as the main protagonist of a diverse group of people bound together by both friendship and curiosity. As the novel begins, Blue is suffering acutely from the loss of her mother Maura who disappeared at the end of the previous book. Maura, a powerful psychic, has presumably decided to search for Glendower on her own — leaving behind only a cryptic note which promises she can be found “underground.” According to legend, Glendower was a Welsh king who was spirited away from his homeland and laid to rest somewhere in an elaborate cave system near the fictional town of Henrietta, Virginia. Like the legend of King Arthur, Glendower is not dead in the physiological sense, but rather in some form of suspended animation, waiting for one worthy soul to wake him. For the man or woman who manages to find and rouse the king, there is the promise of magical favors.

Joining again with her unlikely friends from the prestigious Aglionby Academy (Gansy, Ronan, Adam and Noah), Blue spearheads the subterranean search for Glendower — logically assuming that if she finds the king, Marua will be nearby. This quest eventually leads them to a rural farm of Jesse Dittley. One of Stiefvater’s strengths is creating memorable, often eccentric characters like Dittley. A great hulk of a man, he’s plain spoken and surprisingly gentle. He takes reluctant shine to Blue, nicknaming her “Ant,” a reference to things which are small yet powerful. Through their unconventional friendship, Blue convinces Dittley to allow her and her friends through the gated cave entrance on his property. This is not an easy decision, as Ditty’s convinced the cave’s cursed and has already claimed the lives of several of his relatives. 

Upon entering the caverns, they find not the mythical king but his daughter, Gwenllian. Entombed alive for reasons unknown (yes, these things happen in The Raven Boys series), the woman is now utterly mad from centuries of isolation. Still, Blue and Gansy recognize that she’s a valuable source of information if they can ever sense of her constant riddles and taunts.

To complicate matters further, the maniacal and sinister Colin Greenmantle continues his own search for Glendower. Introduced in the previous book, Greenmantle is a professional collector of unusual things, a sociopath and a murderer. In The Dream Thieves, he dispatched a hired assassin (the enigmatic “Gray Man”) to locate a magical object called the Greywaren which could manifest items out of the dream world and into the real one. When the “Gray Man” discovered that this “object” was actually Ronan, he couldn’t bring himself to turn the boy over to his employer. Fuming from this betrayal, Greenmantle has come to Henrietta to finish the job himself. What follows is an increasingly dangerous game of cat-and-mouse as Blue, Gansy and the others try to outwit or at least out-race Greenmantle to the king’s final resting place. The story culminates with the opposing teams of supernatural treasure hunters entering the caverns for a deadly showdown.

​Like the other books in this series, I continue to be impressed with both Stiefvater’s world building, authentic characters and intriguing subplots. If I have one major criticism of Blue Lily, Lily Blue, it’s that it doesn’t do enough to advance the overall mythology of the series. The one major resolution of the novel is that Blue does find her mother. But after three books, the protagonists still aren’t that much closer to solving the mystery of Glendower. With lesser authors, this lack of resolution would have me annoyed or worried. But I trust Stiefvater will get us there in the end and, honestly, I’d be okay if these books went on forever. While I wished for more a little more in this one, Blue Lily, Lily Blue is another enjoyable installment to The Raven Cycle and well worth your time!

RELATED: Reviews of The Raven Boys (novel and graphic novel) |Review of The Dream Thieves: The Raven Cycle Book 2  |  Review of Blue Lily, Lily Blue: The Raven Cycle Book 3 | Review of The Raven King: The Raven Cycle Book 4  |  Supernatural Book Collection | Paranormal Book Collection

The Dream Thieves is the second book in the Raven Boys Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s rare for me to launch into reading all the books in a series back-to-back, but I was so taken with the first, The Raven Boys, that I knew I had to continue on immediately. (See my review of The Raven Boys.)

​Done correctly, the second part of anything — a movie, a play, a book — can be the best part. The introduction’s over, the conclusion awaits, and everything in between is where the heart of the story resides and some of the best drama unfolds. This was certainly true of The Dream Thieves which builds on the compelling but largely secondary character of Ronan Lynch. We learned some important things about Ronan in the first book, particularly how his promising future was upended when he found his father’s mangled body in the barns near the family home. Following this unsolved murder, Ronan’s mother lapsed into an inexplicable coma and the bizarre provisions of his father’s will have kept Ronan and his brothers away from both her and their home. This means poor Ronan has become the proverbial man without a country, receiving a monthly stipend from the vast family fortune so he can continue to attend the Aglionby prep school yet denying him what he wants most — answers.

As if Ronan's life wasn’t difficult enough, a corrupt and dislikable classmate named Joseph Kavinsky has taken a sudden interest in him, presenting him with a series of gifts which are both weirdly personal and slightly threatening. But Kavinsky also has the answers to many of Ronan’s questions, including how to extract items from one’s dream life and manifest them in the waking world. This ability, which Ronan shared his late father, allowed the elder Lynch to build their immense wealth and ultimately lead to his assassination by a mysterious individual known as “The Gray Man.” While Ronan approaches “dream theft” warily, Kavinsky is an unapologetic burglar, caring little for the long-term consequences of his actions if they fulfill his immediate needs and desires. The more Kavinsky and Ronan pull from the supernatural world, the more they deplete the ley line which powers Cabeswater, Ronan’s ghostly friend Noah, and may lead to the mythical king, Glendower.

It was risky for Stiefvater to dedicate so much of The Dream Thieves to Kavinsky and Ronan, especially since it meant less attention for the cycle’s presumptive protagonists, Gansey and Blue. Yet it worked for the most part. We never doubt that the boys’ strange teacher-student relationship is built on a foundation of mutual antagonism and selfish need, yet we revel to discover that Ronan, for all his faults, simply isn’t the hedonistic scoundrel Kavinsky and many others expect him to be. Their differences become irreconcilable when Kavinsky reveals a sexual price for his mentorship, reducing Ronan to just another possession to be toyed with and then discarded. The topic of Ronan’s sexuality and his reaction to Kavinsky’s demands are skillfully handled and also let Stiefvater address his equally complicated relationship with Gansey, a boy he describes as a brother but who clearly fulfills multiple roles. 

While I didn’t enjoy The Dream Thieves quite as much as the first book, finding the conclusion too melodramatic for my taste, I was impressed by the author’s world building and her willingness to take her characters down uncharted paths. There’s a lot of new material and characters introduced in this book, but Stiefvater doesn’t cheat us (or Ronan) by withholding answers while simultaneously laying the foundation for greater things to come. 

RELATED: Reviews of The Raven Boys (novel and graphic novel) |Review of The Dream Thieves: The Raven Cycle Book 2  |  Review of Blue Lily, Lily Blue: The Raven Cycle Book 3 | Review of The Raven King: The Raven Cycle Book 4  |  Supernatural Book Collection | Paranormal Book Collection

MY ORIGINAL REVIEW OF THE NOVEL:

Within the first paragraph of Maggie Stiefvater's The Raven Boys, I was worried I had made a mistake. After all, the first things Maggie tells us about her female protagonist, Blue Sargent, is that she comes from a long line of psychics and that it's been foretold by said psychics that she'll eventually kill her true love with a kiss. Poor Blue has grown up with this grim specter and it's become even more frightful now that she's 18 and seriously interested in boys. At this point, I admit that my cynicism for young adult fiction took over. 

Ah shit, I thought, I just spent money for another tedious YA paranormal romance. There will be nothing for me in this novel but a rising sense of irritation.

Fortunately, I was dead wrong. 

The Raven Boys turned out to be a highly engaging novel which both surprised and pleased me by not indulging in the usual YA paranormal tropes about a demure girl with special powers who's loved by a contingent of dangerous, damaged bastards but is afraid to love them back. In fact, props to Stiefvater for not only providing authentic male characters, but also presenting young male culture as being both supportive and welcoming (because it can be, you know). 

The meat of the novel revolves around Blue's family gift and its connection to a mysterious energy corridor called a ley line which runs near her hometown of Henrietta, Virginia. Blue's not overtly clairvoyant  but when she visits the ley line on with her aunt on St. Mark's Eve — a night when the spirits of those who will die in the next year march by — she has a ghostly vision of a young man who identifies himself as "Gansey." As it turns out, "Gansey" is Richard "Dick" Campbell Gansey, III, a wealthy student at the prestigious Aglionby Academy. The students at the all-male prep school are cumulatively known as "raven boys" by the Henrietta natives who view them with a mixture of intolerance and envy. Blue would normally eschew "raven boys," partly because of their reputation, partly because of that whole I-will-kill-you-with-a-kiss thing. Instead, she's drawn into Gansey's circle and his obsessive quest for a legendary Welsh king called Gwendower he swears is buried someone along the ley line. According to myth, anyone who awakens the sleeping king will be granted a supernatural favor. Gansey's Gwendower fixation and Blue's ominous vision of the boy eventually culminate in an uneasy partnership shared by three other Aglionby students and — unbeknownst to all of them — their unscrupulous Latin professor.

Stiefvater's prose is rich and highly atmospheric, sometimes straying close to poetry in a way reminiscent of Neil Gaiman. Her vision of the fictional Henrietta, a southern town curiously populated by powerful psychics and affluent schoolboys, becomes a fascinating backdrop for a variety of subplots. Stiefvater should also be complemented for tying up enough loose threads to make The Raven Boys a satisfying novel on its own while simultaneously leaving enough unresolved so the reader is craving the next book in the cycle.

​Check this one out!

RELATED: Review of The Dream Thieves: The Raven Cycle Book 2

REVIEW OF THE RAVEN BOYS: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL

The Raven Boys Graphic Novel, adapted by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Sas Milledge, breathes visual life into Maggie Stiefvater's bestselling YA supernatural fantasy, The Raven Boys. Originally published in 2012, the novel embarked readers on a mesmerizing journey through The Raven Cycle, a four-book saga steeped in myth and mystery. This graphic novel adaptation, released in August 2025, seeks to capture the enchantment and suspense that endeared the original to countless fans.

Williams's adaptation is a testament to the power of storytelling through visuals. The necessity of condensing Stiefvater's intricate plot into a graphic format inevitably simplifies certain elements, akin to a book being translated into a film. As a result, some of rich complexities, especially the nuanced relationships between the Aglionby Academy students—Gansey, Noah, Ronan, and Adam—and Blue, the girl entwined in their quest, are somewhat diminished. Despite this, the core narrative remains intact: a slowburn quest to find the legendary Welsh King Glendower and the looming prophecy over Gansey's tragic fate.

Sas Milledge's artwork employs heavy ink work and a limited color palette, perfectly complementing the novel's dark supernatural plot mixed with subplots about abuse, grief, trauma and murder. While Milledge's artistic interpretations may diverge from what readers of the original novel might have imagined, this divergence adds a unique dimension to the story, offering fresh perspectives on beloved characters.

Notably, the graphic novel retains the suspense and surprising twists that captivated readers in Stiefvater's original work. Whether you're a first-time reader or a long-time fan, this adaptation promises an engaging experience, allowing you to rediscover the magic and mystery of The Raven Boys through a new lens.
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RELATED: Reviews of The Raven Boys (novel and graphic novel) |Review of The Dream Thieves: The Raven Cycle Book 2  |  Review of Blue Lily, Lily Blue: The Raven Cycle Book 3 | Review of The Raven King: The Raven Cycle Book 4  |  Supernatural Book Collection | Paranormal Book Collection

OTHER REVIEWS IN THIS SERIES: Red Hood: Outlaws Vol 1 | Red Hood Outlaws: Vol. 2 | Red Hood: Outlaws Vol 3-5

Red Hood Outlaws: Volume 2 continues the Original DC Stories series by Webtoons, penned by Patrick R. Young and Nico Bascuñán. This installment follows the unconventional trio of Jason Todd, Artemis Grace, and Bizarro, who have traded their criminal pasts for a seat at the Justice League's table. Now operating from the Watchtower, a gleaming space station, the Outlaws face skepticism from the public and the challenge of filling the void left by more esteemed superheroes. Their latest mission pits them against two formidable villains: Medusa, the mythic gorgon whose gaze turns victims to stone, and Mirror Master, a cunning criminal with the power to manipulate reflections.

The heart of Red Hood Outlaws: Volume 2 ​ lies in the personal trials confronting each member of the team. Jason Todd, grappling with his traumatic history, strives to be the leader the Outlaws need while navigating a budding romance with Artemis. His journey is one of introspection and growth, as he balances love, leadership, and the shadows of his past. Meanwhile, Artemis faces her own demons, haunted by her brief and disastrous tenure as Wonder Woman. Her battle against Medusa is complicated by her feelings for Medusa's sister, Euryale, adding layers of emotional complexity. Bizarro, the team's enigmatic powerhouse, harbors a devastating secret about the destruction of his home world. His internal struggle adds depth to his character, showcasing the vulnerability beneath his formidable exterior.

While Red Hood Outlaws: Volume 2  offers an engaging narrative, it stumbles in comparison to its predecessor. The Medusa storyline begins with promise but falters with a rushed conclusion precipitated by Euryale's sudden, unconvincing shift in allegiance. In contrast, the Mirror Master storyline forces the team to face uncomfortable truths, creating a compelling psychological battleground. The conclusion is clever, capitalizing on Bizarro's unique nature where everything is opposite, which turns the tide in an unexpected way.

​Artistically, the second volume maintains the vibrant and eye-catching style that fans have come to love from Bascuñán. The artwork is particularly good at capturing the emotional turmoil in the Mirror Man storyline. Despite its narrative shortcomings, Red Hood Outlaws: Volume 2 ​ remains an enjoyable read for fans of the series. It may not be the strongest outing for the Outlaws, but it continues to explore the complexities of its characters with heart and creativity.

​RELATED FEATURES: Red Hood Collection  |  Jason Todd's Empty Grave  |  Nightwing, Batman and Adoption Problems  |  Superman Collection | Wonder Woman Collection