Welcome to Stiefvater’s world, where sleeping kings, a family of psychics, and best friends find their home in Virginia.
Scholastic
Depending on when you ask her, Maggie Stiefvater might describe her four-part Raven Cycle as a series about Welsh kings and fast cars, or she might describe it as a series about what makes a hero a hero. Because at its core, The Raven Cycle is about four private-school boys in Virginia, the girl they befriend, and the intricacies of navigating those relationships. But it's also a fantasy series, because this girl happens to be the youngest in a family of psychics, and she and the four boys go on an adventure to wake the centuries-old Welsh king Glendower because he is said to grant a wish to the person who completes this task. He's buried on something called a ley line, and there are magical forests and psychic visions and fast cars and unforeseen powers threaded together with a haunting, mystical aura.
The first three installments (The Raven Boys, The Dream Thieves, and Blue Lily, Lily Blue) are in stores now, and Stiefvater is hard at work on the final installment, so now's the time to catch up. Here's why:
1. The Raven Cycle is the type of book Stiefvater herself always wanted to read: a fantasy thriller.
Robert Severi
In a phone interview with BuzzFeed last month, Stiefvater recounted how The Raven Cycle is ultimately born of her interests. She begins speaking at a fast clip, lightly flavored by the Virginia drawl that marks her current home. "I started writing when I was really small. They were terrible novels about dogs test-driving cars. I mean, they were really terrible novels. But I wrote dozens and dozens, and I was a big reader at the same time and my mom used to give me these award-winning fantasies with these award-winning stickers on the front, and I loved them. And then my father gave me his hand-me-down thrillers that were called things like Shot in the Back or Point Blank, and they were just terrible thrillers and I loved them too. I always thought the ideal book was those two things combined, and so that's what I was trying to do with The Raven Cycle."
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