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4.25 stars! This review will be spoiler free for The Raven King, but will contain spoilers from previous books! Synopsis: The final installment in The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater. Blue and Gansey. Ronan and Adam. Maura and Gray Man. Calla and Jimi. Noah and Cabeswater. Neeve and Piper. Gwenllian and Glendower. THE GANG IS BACK and they are ready to face the unknown. This plot is way to complicated to even start to explain. Just know Blue is fated to kill her true love and now we have to face that fate in this last book in the series. Initial thoughts: I laughed. I cried. I felt the FEELS. I'm still not ready for this story to be done. I still want more from this world and from these characters. This world is still ever changing, ever growing. There's so much we still don't know and I feel both satisfied, yet unsatisfied. I can't explain this feeling any other way. What I'm going to say about this book honestly applies to the series as a whole. The plot is thought provoking. The fast paced moments fly by so quickly you're left wondering what ever happened and how. The slow moments are so perfectly in slow motion that when the pace picks back up, you actually felt like the world was in slow motion for a second. it's just crazy how easily Stiefvater can pull your mind into this spookily mysterious and beautiful world. The characters are complex. Some are predictable, some are unpredictable. Some are straight edge, some a morally grey. Some are loveable, some are hard to love. Either way, you will find that all of them are important and will become important to you. Cabeswater is an interesting character in itself as well, lifelike and full of wonder. Where I knocked off some points was the romance and slightly anti-climactic ending. I honestly can never get enough of Gansey and Blue and their quirky love. BUT. The whole resolution of Blue and Gansey sort of played out how I expected, but also did not live up to my expectations. I felt like there could have been more explanation of this ending. More from Gansey's POV. More than just a "fade to black" and "oh this is where we are not a few days later." Everything else about the ending and what led up to it though was a masterpiece. I want/need more STILL. I imagine I'll always feel this way with these books and these characters though. Plot: This is the type of book to make your mind go round in circles. The world is ever growing. Magic and psychic powers and physical land come together to create this place called Cabeswater and now in this final book, we realize that no matter how much we learn about this place, there’s always more to learn. There will always be something new. Cabeswater is always changing. It’s history and future is a complicated circle where you just… you’re just mind f*cked. The plot for this last book was quite interesting. I really had no idea where this book was going to go. I had taken such a long break from this series that I forgot a few things until I came across the embedded reminders in this book regarding what happened in the previous books. Some things I really liked. The pacing was excellent. There was a perfect mixture of fast and slow and moseying along. Also, new friends! YAY! We finally get resolution regarding the great king Glendower. We finally get resolution regarding Blue’s father. We finally get resolution regarding certain romantic-ships and friendships. All of that I LOVED. Some things I thought were odd, but worked. Like the introduction of a new magical member into the gang, who I’m not sure if saying would be spoilery so I won’t. I liked him though. I liked how he easily integrated into the group and his presence made sense by the end. I kept waiting for something to go wrong in this, but the twist never came. The whole demon of Cabeswater was an interesting addition to the plot from book three. I had no idea how they were going to deal with it or find out what it was or anything! The solution to this problem, however, fell a little short. Some things I did not care for, like at all. There were little things just shoved into the plot that felt a undeveloped, unnecessary, and kind of… just thrown in? Some of these aspects of the book honestly could have been taken out and not changed the overall plot at all. Then those pages could have been used to expand on the ending more. I mean… How quick was that fade to black right at the end? I wanted more of an explanation. Also, I wanted to see more from Blue’s family. I felt like they were such an integral part of everything from the start that the lack of them was disappointing. Now I’m going to talk about the main romance, Blue and Gansey, separately. This romance was a subplot that I was dying for. I wanted so much from them and I just didn’t get enough. When they finally came out because we knew they had to at some point, they lost the spark of being a couple with stolen glances and hidden touches. They were still wonderful to read about though, just in a different way. The cute/adorable way early contemporary couples are. I was just beginning to accept that my initial spark of love for them was gone forever when the ending came AND THEN… I was left even more unsatisfied. I needed more from Gansey’s POV about what happened at the end. I mean, I like being left wanting more and having some unanswered questions that my brain is free to figure out on its own, BUT. There were just too many unanswered questions left. What I think to be VITAL questions. And that didn’t sit well with me. I feel like there needs to be more of an epilogue. Characters: BLUE continues to surprise me. We learn things about her through her father that I definitely wasn’t expecting. I love it. It suits her so well. GANSEY IS THE MF BEST. I love him so much. I love that he’s proper as a defense mechanism. I love his charisma, his intelligence, his overall “gansey-ness.” We need more Gansey’s. We need more Gansey in glasses too. I love it when he wears his glasses and we didn’t get any of that this book. ADAM is still my least favorite. But he has his moments. I SHIP HIM SO MUCH WITH RONAN. That is my favorite thing about him. RONAN is so complex. He’s so complicated. And I love that he’s unpredictable about mostly everything EXCEPT when it comes to his family/extended family. When he loves, he loves fiercely. He may be slow to show his vulnerabilities, but when he does, it is the cutest darn thing! NOAH is almost, sort of, not really Noah anymore. He’s literally my second biggest question by the end of the book. What even happened to him? Where did he go? What happened to his soul? He became so many things in this book. He wasn’t really Noah. HENRY is a new and very welcome addition to the story. I still feel like he was thrown in late and like I don’t know much about him, but if his intentions are true-I like him. He’s got heart. He’s got gusto. He’s a third wheel sometimes, but never feels like one. He’s also Asian and I love that. Overall: I am iffy about how much I loved this ending. I feel my bias because I LOVE these characters so so so much. I love this world and I love the magic. I just know that I did not like this last book as much as I love book two or three, which blew me away. Altogether AN AMAZING SERIES. A UNIQUE SERIES. A series full of wonder, adventure, love, and family. It's great if you love mysterious, spooky, very mood heavy, very world heavy books: GO FOR IT. I stand by my initial warning though. Stick with it until half way through book one for things to spice up. Definitely get to book two if you can because it's so worth it. I'm thinking of rereading book two right now. Anyways, about Raven King. I liked it. Didn't love it. I got a lot of resolution from some bigger things, but there are still a lot of VITAL questions left unanswered and I'm not okay with that. My heart needs ANSWERS.