Book Review: The Raven Boys

I'm lucky enough to occasionally get books in the mail, both from authors sharing their work and readers sharing their favorites. This is one of the latter:

 The Raven Boys, by Maggie Stiefvater

Malin sent me a copy (along with some other goodies) months and months ago, but it sat on my bookcase for ages before I finally gave it a try. Why? That cover. It just looks so... Twilight-wannabe, you know? I could tell just by looking it was another paranormal romance, and I never seemed to be in the right mood for another paranormal romance. Even the back blurb goes on about this is the year Blue falls in love, yadda yadda eyeroll.

Except, here's the thing: The Raven Boys is not a romance. There are no declarations of love, no unrequited pining, no angst-laden glances or tortured miasmas of desire. (And I guess it goes without saying from that tagline that there's no kissing. Ha!) In fact, I don't mind telling you that Blue does NOT fall in love. Is that a spoiler? GOOD. Because I want you to read this book for what it is, not for what some publisher's marketing department decided was "really hot right now."

See, The Raven Boys is not a romance. It's so much better than that.

Instead, this is the compelling story of a girl raised in a family of female psychics, and of a group of college boys on a quest for the long-lost tomb of an ancient king. The author does a fantastic job weaving in shades of the supernatural without turning the story into fantasy; nearly everything feels like it *could* happen, right here and right now. The characters also feel real, nuanced and distinct and believable.

The friendship among the 4 boys is beautifully written without feeling sappy, and I like that the story follows the guys on their own as often as it does Blue. Their two worlds intersect more and more as the book goes on, but you still get private moments with everyone, which makes it feel more like an ensemble cast.

The pace really picks up about midway through, as the guys stumble across an unsolved murder and a bloodthirsty rival, while Blue faces dark occult mysteries from within her own family.

This brings me to my only other complaint, but it's a doozie: The Raven Boys abruptly ends about 2/3 of the way through a great story. It was so sudden, in fact, that I went looking for ripped out pages in my copy. Then I tried to figure out how on earth the author decided it was ok to just END right when the story was getting so good! Very little was resolved, all the major questions driving the plot went unanswered, and there wasn't even a hint that an ending was coming. It just suddenly ran out of pages. Plus the very last line was such a painful non-sequitur that I had to go looking on the internet for answers, where I found - of course! - that this is only the first in a series.

Would you excuse me for a quick moment?

[picking up pillow]

[screaming into pillow]

Thank you.

I would almost be Ok with the abrupt ending, but it turns out the next book focuses on a different main character - my least favorite, in fact -  and switches plot lines all together. From Booklist:

"This time, their quest for the legendary sleeping Welsh King takes a backseat to a spate of secrets, dreams, and nightmares..."

So we STILL won't get any answers, AND it focuses on my least favorite character... and his nightmares.

BAH HUMBUG.

To be fair, The Dream Thieves has overwhelmingly positive reviews, but I'm just petulant enough to avoid reading it anyway. I just want a story, authors. One. Complete. Story. Why must you be so terrified we won't buy your next book that you have to extort us out of proper endings? If we like your work, we'll buy more of it, I promise!

Ok, rant over. Sorry.

So in conclusion: The Raven Boys is an absolutely fantastic 2/3 of a story that is in no way a romance. If you're ok with that, then you should totally read it. ;)


And to help out the rest of us, how about recommending your favorite stand-alone YA fantasy/sci-fi book(s) in the comments? No cliff-hangers or unresolved endings allowed! And.... GO.


* Check out the rest of my reviews (and my top recommendations) at my book review page!

A Little More Disney HDR

I actually finished these shots ages ago, but forgot to post them. So in case your week could use a little more sparkle:

 SPARKLIIIES. [jazz hands]

Boring Technical Stuff: I use a Canon 7D with a 17-50 lens, and post-process in Photomatix. While working on these I learned that Photomatix has a known softening issue: the finished image looks much softer/blurrier than the preview window shows it. This led to a lot of frustration, and I finally ended up just screen-capping the preview window to get this next image the way I wanted it:

See all those tiny star specks in the sky? They're not visable at all after post-processing in Photomatix - you just get a big blur, even though the preview window clearly shows it this way. Like I said, frustrating!

So if you use Photomatix, make sure your image is much sharper in Preview than you like, so that the post-process softening won't be as noticeable.

(Or you could just do the HDR tonemapping in Photomatix, and save all your other tweaks & image adjustments for Photoshop, which apparently a lot of pro photographers do. Personally I like playing with the sliders in Photomatix, though; it's way more fun there than PS.)

Most nights the shooting gallery over in Frontierland is a ghost town (heh), so you can have the whole place to yourself for long exposure shots.

This one is not from Disney, but I think it has enough pixie dust to qualify:

Back during Christmas vacation my dad - also a photography buff - and I spent one whole night playing with bokeh, the effect that gives you those blurred-out lights in the background. I found this copper wire tree in their knick-knack cabinet, set it on mirrored paper, coiled a strand of small LEDs through the "roots," and then shot the whole thing a few feet in front of the Christmas tree.

Sure, it took one whole night of prep & experimenting for just that shot, but we had a blast. (Post-processing was done in Perfect Photo 7, my go-to photo editor now for non-HDR shots when I need something beyond basic iPhoto tweaks.)

 

And finally, here's the Haunted Mansion again, which you've already seen:

I'm still learning, of course, but I hope you liked the eye candy!

*****

UPDATE: Wow, thanks for all the encouragement, guys! By popular request, I've made most of these available as prints over on DeviantArt. (If you want one that's NOT over there, just let me know and I'll add it.)

DA is really reasonable on their pricing -  8X10's start at less than $5 - and their print quality is fantastic. (I have several poster-size prints from DA.) I also get a 20% royalty, so it's a win-win. :)

Thanks again, guys! It's always awesome to make people happy just by doing something you love.