The Raven Boys (Raven Cycle Series #1)

by Maggie Stiefvater

Overview

An all-new series from the masterful, #1 New York Times bestselling author Maggie Stiefvater!

FORMAT: UNABRIDGED 10 CDS
Legend holds that Glendower, a vanished Welsh king, sleeps beneath the hills until he's needed. The first person to find him will be granted a wish - either by seeing him open his eyes, or by cutting out his heart.

Gansey has it all - family money, a car, time for extracurriculars and friends - but he's always loved the tales of sleeping kings. He thinks he's found one too, or at least the area where one might be: in the town of Henrietta, VA. And the best way to be there is to attend prestigious Aglionby Academy for Boys.

Blue is the daughter of the town psychic in Henrietta, Virginia, but is too practical to believe in things like spirits or true love. Her policy is to stay away from Aglionby boys...but it may be that one in particular can change her mind about magic, and maybe even love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780545465939
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/18/2012
Series:	Beyond the Orphan Train #01 , #1
Pages:	10
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 5.10(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Maggie Stiefvater is the #1 NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author of the novels SHIVER, LINGER, FOREVER, and THE SCORPIO RACES. She is also the author of LAMENT: THE FAERIE QUEEN'S DECEPTION and BALLAD: A GATHERING OF FAERIE. She lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children. You can visit her online at www.maggiestiefvater.com.

Editorial Reviews

Henrietta, Virginia, ley lines and psychic visions... Prepare to enter Blue Sargent's world where no one is as they seem and even the town has a supernatural energy that draws you into an adventure both ominous and forthcoming. St. Mark's Eve is when Blue helps her clairvoyant mother as they watch the spirits of Henrietta townsfolk parade down the church's lane signifying who will pass away that year. This year she is surprised that she can see one of the many drifting ghosts and this vision of a local Aglionby Academy boy changes the course of her future. Blue's been told her whole life that she will fall in love, kiss her beloved and then he will die. Uncertain as who her first love will be, Blue's protected life is uprooted and she finds herself on a ghostly scavenger hunt with four Raven Boys (a nickname for Aglionby's students). Gansey has captured her attention, for it is his spirit that she has seen. He is so different from anyone that she has ever known and even though it is Adam that has fallen for her, she finds that she has fallen for Gansey, Adam, Ronan, and Noah in different ways. Will Patton brings the quirky characters to life well beyond just a storytelling. He embodies each character with a lilting Virginian accent lulling the listener. The first book in the "Raven Cycle" series is captivating. Even more so because of Patton's interpretation. The story, the characters, the energy is potent and I was drawn in from the beginning. Every character holds a secret from Blue and her household of psychics, to the Raven Boys, to the ghost of the Welsh King, Glendower, to the Latin Teacher, Barrington Whelk. Many secrets unfold during the tale and others are left for the remaining books in the series. Reviewer: Toni Jourdan

Children's Literature - Toni Jourdan

…Stiefvater not only weaves a suspenseful tale…but she also does so stylishly, with sly social commentary…This first in a planned four-novel series draws readers into a world where time enfolds hauntingly, and magic informs reality…
—Mary Quattlebaum

The Washington Post

…a well-paced neo-Gothic thriller about a teenage fivesome's search for the supernatural…and themselves…Stiefvater, who has an assured and entertaining way with language, doesn't talk down to her readers, and she ably blends the mystical and the earthly, the primitive and the contemporary in a way that brings to mind the work of John Bellairs, J. K. Rowling, Lois Duncan and Stephenie Meyer.
—Anna Holmes

The New York Times Book Review

By grounding this new series in what might be called everyday weirdness—a rich teenager’s obsession with legend and glory, a shabby household of female psychics with a pay-per-minute hotline—Stiefvater (The Scorpio Races) avoids the burden of building a seamless alternate world, instead saturating our reality with magic. Haunting, distinctly individual characters are at the forefront: Blue, an outsider in her own home because she isn’t clairvoyant; Gansey and his posse of misfits, who lack any sense of home and seek meaning elsewhere; and Barrington Whelk, a Latin teacher with a secret. Gansey and his fellow “raven boys” attend exclusive Aglionby Academy—itself out of place in working-class Henrietta, Va.—and Blue’s goal is to avoid them at any cost. She can’t, of course, but Stiefvater doesn’t rush this inevitability. Hopes, fears, quirks, and forebodings gather gradually, coalescing as living portraits. It’s a tour de force of characterization, and while there is no lack of event or mystery, it is the way Stiefvater’s people live in the reader’s imagination that makes this such a memorable read. Ages 13–up. Agent: Laura Rennert, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

é “Stiefvater's novel, inspired by Manx, Irish, and Scottish legends of beautiful but deadly fairy horses that emerge from the sea each autumn, begins rivetingly and gets better and better . . . all the way, in fact, to best.”
–Horn Book Review, Starred Review

é “Masterful...like nothing else out there now.”
–Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review

é “A study of courage and loyalty tested…utterly compelling.”
–Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

é “A book with cross-appeal to lovers of fantasy, horse stories, romance, and action-adventure, this seems to have a shot at being a YA blockbuster.”
–Booklist, Starred Review

é “Up–On the sea-battered and wind-swept isle of Thisby, fall brings the famed and feared capaill uisce, or water horses, and with them, death . . . The author takes great liberties with the Celtic myth, but the result is marvelous.”
–School Library Journal, Starred Review

“Stiefvater not only steps out of the young adult fantasy box with “The Scorpio Races” but crushes it with pounding hooves…. If “The Scorpio Races” sounds like nothing you've ever read, that's because it is.”
–The New York Times Book Review

“Tactile world-building, an island full of compelling characters, and the budding romance between Sean and Puck all make for an unforgettable book that's quite unlike anything else out there.”
–NPR Books

“With this beautifully executed drama, Stiefvater has established herself as one of the finest YA novelists writing today.”
–Entertainment Weekly

“Tense, atmospheric, and utterly original.”
–People Magazine

From the Publisher

Gr 8 Up—Blue was born into a psychic family with the misfortune of having no psychic ability of her own. However, her presence helps others "see" more clearly, which has led to every psychic she's ever met predicting that if Blue were to kiss her true love, he would die. Not interested in boys yet and especially repulsed by the snooty lot at Aglionby Academy, she decides to simply never kiss anyone. When she has her first clairvoyant experience, it's not as thrilling as she had hoped. She sees that Gansey, a boy from Aglionby, will die within the next year. She can't get him out of her mind, a task made impossible when she meets him and his three friends. The Raven Boys, as Aglionby students are called, rope her into helping them with their mission: to locate a ley line. The line of energy could possibly connect them to the past and to the legendary "sleeping" Welsh king, Glendower, who will grant the one who awakens him a reward. Their quest puts each of them in harm's way, made more imminent when Blue finally starts to feel as if her kiss of death is going to be a real problem. First in a planned quartet, The Raven Boys is an incredibly rich and unique tale, a supernatural thriller of a different flavor. The cinematic feel paces the novel well, and the many pieces of the story unfold with grace. The complicated relationships between the Raven boys and Blue are not of the standard main character/love interest variety and makes the curious plot all the more enthralling. Fans have been salivating for Stiefvater's next release and The Raven Boys delivers.—Emily Chornomaz, Camden County Library System, NJ

School Library Journal

An ancient Welsh king may be buried in the Virginia countryside; three privileged boys hope to disinter him. Meanwhile, 16-year-old Blue Sargent, daughter of a small-town psychic, has lived her whole life under a prophecy: If she kisses her true love, he will die. Not that she plans on kissing anyone. Blue isn't psychic, but she enhances the extrasensory power of anyone she's near; while helping her aunt visualize the souls of people soon to die, she sees a vision of a dying Raven boy named Gansey. The Raven Boys--students at Aglionby, a nearby prep school, so-called because of the ravens on their school crest--soon encounter Blue in person. From then on, the point of view shifts among Blue; Gansey, a trust-fund kid obsessed with finding King Glendower buried on a ley-line in Virginia; and Adam, a scholarship student obsessed with his own self-sufficiency. Add Ronan, whose violent insouciance comes from seeing his father die, and Noah, whose first words in the book are, "I've been dead for seven years," and you've got a story very few writers could dream up and only Stiefvater could make so palpably real. Simultaneously complex and simple, compulsively readable, marvelously wrought. The only flaw is that this is Book 1; it may be months yet before Book 2 comes out. The magic is entirely pragmatic; the impossible, extraordinarily true. (Fantasy. 13 & up)

Kirkus Reviews