The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

     While I obtained this book before its release date through less than conventional methods, I felt beholden to critique it, as that is the purpose of such copies. This is an endeavor made so much simpler by the fact that this is yet another masterpiece written by Maggie Stiefvater. Reading her work is at once amazing and incredibly sad; sad not always because of the content, but because I know that I will never be a tenth of the writer she is. She weaves stories like tapestries, and it is a talent that is very rare. There are many excellent writers, but there are very few that take me out of this world we live in and into theirs. 
     There is a breathlessness in the way Stiefvater writes. This has been illustrated no more perfectly than in The Raven Boys. The entire book reads like the moment before a gasp; I don't know how to express it differently. The story of Blue Sargent and her Raven Boys feels like it teeters on a precipice on which you don't want to fall but can't wait until you do. I've reviewed other works by Maggie Stiefvater and I have talked about her singular ability to create love with such staggering detail that it makes your heart clench with the beauty of it. This first part of the story is about love, but also about the hiding from it. Blue has always been told she would kill her true love if she were to kiss him, and knowing this before I read I expected the love that couldn't be between her and true love-which I also expected to be revealed fairly quickly. But this part wasn't about Blue and her true love as much as it was about the relationship between her and all her Raven Boys. Her true love hasn't been revealed at all, at least not to me. This first leap into this "strange and sinister world" of the Raven Boys is about the quest for magic, for the unattainable just within their grasp, and entirely about showing us, the eavesdroppers into their world, that something is starting. 
     It goes without saying that I recommend this book to anyone who reads...well, anything. My only critique is that I know how long I must wait until I can rejoin Blue and her Raven Boys on their quest. I very much wish that this book had been a stand-alone novel like The Scorpio Races, if only for the fact that I would be able to reach the end with them now, instead of having to wait so long. Why can't excellent authors just start writing 1200 page books instead of insisting on breaking them up into series? Some of us don't want to wait.