The Raven Boys

Maggie Stiefvater was excellent in the anthology "The Curiosities: A Collection of Stories," but I have been lax in reviewing her books, a mistake I will rectify by drawing your attention to the first in her new(ish) triology:   "The Raven Boys."
     
Blue's first love will die after she kisses him.  Gansey wills stop at nothing to find a sleeping, hidden Welsh king of ages past. Blue knows that Gansey will die before the year is out, and because she knows that she knows that she will be the one to kill him.  Gansey is a Raven Boy, an elite and privilege student in the local private school who can make you believe he has everything under control. In Blue's race to save Gansey's life, she may end up killing him.
        Never trust a Raven Boy.

I was not a fan of Maggie Stiefvater's "Shiver" series, because I do not really put up with books that are merely about romance for the sake of romance.  I did like her "Scorpio Races" which was much better, though there was a lot of romance in there, but it was just for the sake of romance.  There were also flesh-eating horses, which is always a bonus.  "The Raven Boys" is by far the best novel she's written, and though it has romance it's romance-y with the threat of death.  So, that's perfectly acceptable.
        Also, it has my favorite thing.  A cast of absolutely crazy characters.  Blue is the main character.  She's a pretty standard tough-girl female heroine, but not in a bad way.  She has her own personality and is not stereotypical at all.  At first, I thought because she didn't have any physic powers the main conflict in the book would be her attaining the powers that were meant to be hers, or something awful and perfectly predictable like that.  I am happy to report, though, that that is not the part of the book.  Throughout the book she remains normal, but also a cut ahead of standard.  Blue is, put simply, I character that I would like to be. Though, I guess I didn't read the description of her appearance close enough, because I never get why Noah says she has spiky hair.
       The Raven Boys are also fantastic.  Noah--we'll discuss Noah in a minute, but Noah is awesome.  Gansey is the ring-leader, who is arrogant, well-intentioned, determined, and hardly able to see past the tip of his own nose.  Metaphorically, of course. Adam is the shy guy who is equally, if not more, determined to make a place for himself in the world. And, of course Ronan Lynch is your bad boy. His father was killed in front of him, so he enjoys getting drunk and getting into fist fights, as well as feeding baby ravens at the crack of dawn.  The juxposition in his personality makes him one of my favorite characters.  Oh, and if you couldn't tell, he's Irish.  (I am too, so I find it amusing.)
      Now, onto Noah.  Since this is Maggie Stiefvater, you accept that you are in her sort of off-kilter world the moment you open the cover (the off-kilter part of the world being flesh eating horses and whacked-out werewolves).  So, one of the first things that Noah says--or, more specifically, is said about Noah in Noah's presence--is sort of strange.  But, hey, this is fiction, so you accept it. Then, about seventy-five pages from the end of the book, everyone all goes like 'Omigod! Noah's actually _______ !' but you're like 'uh, yes, I knew that when Declan first said that, dummies.'  Anyways.  That still doesn't stop Noah from being awesome.
       The plot of this book is pretty good, with enough twists to keep you occupied.  Some of the things I like are the fact that:
             1) A relaxed atmosphere is maintained for the better part of the book.  It's the calm before the storm.  And, maybe people do find out who their true selves are in the face of adversary  but occasionally you want to meet the people before you are thrust into their fight with their adversary   You get to see the personalities of Blue and the Raven Boys fully develop before everything begins to crumble into pieces.
             2) Everyone knows something's going to happen.  It's said multiple times by multiple people.  Occasionally in books it's like normal-normal-normal-normal-DISASTER!  That is a very annoying habit. Because disaster doesn't come on suddenly, you can see it brewing for a while off.  In this book, you can.  Even though it's calm, you can see the storm brewing on the horizon  and you can see that despite all of the build-up and wait, it's going to be one dang good storm.
          Though, sadly, I think I already know what Gansey is going to wish for when he finds the Welsh king. (You get one wish if you find the king. It's not like I'm giving everything away, because it's told to you almost straight off.)  I mean, if you think about it it's pretty obvious.  But, maybe there will be some devastating twist and it won't actually happen that way.  Or, maybe, it'll happen the way I think it will happen and it won't be half-bad because I'm secretly a sap at heart.
          Even if the ultimate ending appears to be a bit predictable, the ending is anything but, and it is fantastic.  Everything is evening out perfectly, coming together in a happy ending in sort of a creepy/sad way.  Happy endings are always nice when they aren't too sappy.  And then my one of my favorite characters says something spectacular.  One of the best things about that line is that it hardly makes any sense.  (You know that you have a good book when the last sentence hardly makes any sense whatsoever, yet you still want to know what it means.)
        And, on that note, I might tell you that the sequel is called "The Dream Thief" is coming out on September 17th (2013, in case you're a time traveler and you were wondering what year you are in), and from the looks of it it's going to be focused around one of my favorite characters, namely one who's bald and tattooed and failing out of school and evidently has a penchant for stealing dreams.
         What did I say?  Never trust a Raven Boy.

http://maggiestiefvater.com/  I haven't looked at it yet, but it looks like a pretty interesting website, which is always good, because usually book websites can be very, uh, dull.

Rotters

What does it mean to be dead?  "Rotters" by Daniel Kraus has the answer.

Secrets are best left buried next to the skeletons in the closet, but it's hard to keep them down there when the source of your livelihood is buried six feet under, locked in a wooden box, and nestled between the pale white ribs of the ones best left in the closet.  The order of the grave robbers is an old and ancient one that's gasping its final breaths when two unexpected things happen:  Joey's mother dies, and a colleague commits the worse sort of heresy possible.  There's beauty in death, if you're around it long enough, as pale and as cold as it is.  The trouble is, if you accept death as your love, you're halfway there yourself.  Joey's drowning in a sea of bones, rats, and lies that are older than he is because nothing will ever be as it seems when you're the Resurrectionist's son.

This is not a book about zombies.  This is not a book about romance. Well, there is love, but it's not romance, really. This is not a book about happiness.  In fact, Daniel Kraus makes Lemony Snicket look like a Care Bear. This is not a book that has any definable parameters.  This is not a book that one raves and gushes about, because in a way, it's too sacred for that.
       This book does not have any definable parameters because it is so many things.  At first, it seems like a realistic fiction book, in which a boy's mother dies and then he has to go live with his horrible father and go to a horrible school where everyone picks on him, including the teachers. For a while there, you think that he's going to do alright, get the girl of his dreams, rise up from his underdog status, and show those bullies their proper places, etc. like in a lot of other books.  Then, you realize that you still have 3/4's of the book to go, you haven't even figured out why the name of the book is 'Rotters,' and that there's a picture of a shovel sticking out of the dirt next to a tombstone on the cover.
       After you get out of the part where it's all a nightmarish high-school fantasy, it gets pretty twisted.  Excuse me, really twisted.  But, that is the most fantastic part about it. In the beginning it's pretty tame.  They rob graves, big whoop.  It's pretty interesting how Joey's interactions at school are directly influenced by his 'graveyard shift' (excuse me, I had to).  He is one of the most dynamic characters I've seen, and even as he steps away from being what fundamentally made him Joey in the beginning of the book and he stops being recognizably Joey, he is still Joey.  It's rare to find a character that changes so absolutely, completely, and believably over the course of one book.
      The high school drama also serves to anchor the book.  In the end of the book, when there is no more high school stuff and everything gets dramatically more weird, the book gets almost dreamy, because there's nothing there that you can really connect with.  Yet, it's better for that.  The book becomes more because true understanding of the real situation lies on the peripheral of your understanding.  It doesn't make any sense now, while you're reading this, but it makes a lot of sense while you're reading the book.  Which, I hope you do, because it's a fantastic book.
     The whole thing with the dudes chasing after the dad because he robbed the grave after he saw the rat king is a bit absurd, though.  If I saw an evil omen, I would've gone back to my house and sat there for a while and thought some before I jumped the gun and did.  It seemed completely out of everything we knew about the Resurrectionist's character.
      Speaking of character, the characters are very.  As you know by now, I like a decently sized cast of personable characters.  This book has two main characters--Joey, and his dad, though, I would suppose you'd be amiss if you didn't count Baby as a main character, so say you have three main characters--and really, only a few of them converse at a time.  Half of the characters in the book are repulsive, and the other half are reclusive.  They are personable,if personable means they have their quirks, but they are a very odd sort of personable.  None of them are loud or overly sarcastic, which is more my style, but most are quietly cynical. And then there are, of course, the few people who devote themselves to a cause with a whole-hearted passion, which I don't really understand, but I almost can, per the style of the writing.  The only person you really connect to is Joey, and the only one you really, really like is Ike or Joey's father's mentor.  Yeah.  But everyone's personality is fantastic, even if you hate them.  Each are their own person, and you forget that they are merely characters in a book.
       The world they live in is vivid, if not bright.  A good book will keep you anchored by not moving to new places every other page.  Many places in this book are revisited and reused, so it feels like you've actually been somewhere, not skimmed by it. That doesn't make any sense either. Excuse me.
      In this day and age, people are easily offended, so I'm going to tell you that there is a bit of a religious undertone.  He doesn't go to church, but there's a dude that comes around frequently telling him that his soul needs to be saved.  And then there the two-fingered Jesus.  I mean, I don't know what people's boundaries are, and I am an open-minded person who doesn't really get people's boundaries, so I thought I would just put that out there.
      And so, now to the ending.  All I'm going to say is that it is a pretty open-ended ending, one that's fantastic and creepy and mysterious and brings up more questions than it does answers.  It's the sort of ending that leads to a sequel, in most cases, but if anyone makes a sequel to this I will personally bring them to their grave because perfection should not be messed with, and, anyways, what could be a better resolution than that?  So, for once, I am pretty pleased with an ending. That must be some sort of momentous event, no?
        The question that this book is supposed to answer, as I posed up in the beginning--'what does it mean to be dead'--is never answered outright, but you're given enough information to form your own answer.  For me, I think that the moment you die is the moment you stop worrying about whether you're truly alive.

http://danielkraus.com/rotters.php  Watch the video by Vorvolakas (that's a band that plays a significant part in the book).  It's pretty creepy, once you get into.  And, I think they're chanting 'pain will not escape you,' or something of that kin, but I'm too sure.  His other books look pretty cool, too.