In Blue Lily, Lily Blue, the third book of the Raven Cycle series, Maggie Stiefvater punctuates the character of Adam’s sacrifice of his pride as such:

Was it okay? Adam had turned down so many offers of help from Gansey. Money for school, money for food, money for rent. Pity and charity, Adam had thought. For so long, he’d wanted Gansey to see him as his equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam.

 

Now he could see that it wasn’t charity Gansey was offering. It was just truth. (298)

Like Gansey, Blue Lily, Lily Blue offers the reader a certain feeling of truth. Many teen or young adult novels of the fantasy or sci-fi variety come with their fair share of obvious vampires, werewolves, or angels, obvious romance, and obvious action. The novels that compose Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle have thus far been quieter, subtler stories. They carry with them a highly original premise about searching for a wish granting welsh king buried under a ley line of magical energy that runs through Henrietta Virginia. In addition they sport beautiful prose, and truly satisfying and potent character progression. Blue Lily, Lily Blue continues to excel in all of these things, indulging in delicious atmosphere while taking it’s time to give every character and every element its due, and this latest installment even comes with a more refined sense of humor. It is a novel and a series that pushes forward with its mysteries and tight plot, but the crux of the enjoyment, and the cause for page-turning zeal, are the provocative conversations and interactions between the characters. Therefore, like Adam, Blue Lily, Lily Blue finds strength in the same thing the rest of the series has up to this point: a quiet, confident humility.

The setup is this: after the explosive events of the previous novel The Dream Thieves, our main quintet’s search for Glendower, and the favor he will supposedly grant them, is both interrupted and aided by the disappearance of Blue’s mother down a mysterious hole. The fact that this cave is under Cabeswater, a dreamlike forest along the ley line, makes exploring it and finding Blue’s mom no easy task. While they try and figure it out, they each deal with pressing personal issues as usual: Blue tries to figure out the source of her psychic amplifying powers and what her future holds after high school; Gansey attempts to decide what he’ll use Glendower’s favor for and strives to hold onto his friends; Adam struggles with his own self confidence and the responsibility of being one with Cabeswater thanks to the deal he made with the magical force two books ago, and Ronan continues to deal with the consequences of his dream thieving powers and tries to bring the man who killed his father to toll. Noah remains a foil for most of the other characters, and serves to be both adorable and frightening. It is perhaps obvious, but still worth mentioning, that none of these summations, this boiling down, do the inner struggles of these sympathetic characters justice.

One thing that is disappointing about this particular installment is the lack of Ronan chapters. While the first book didn’t feature the character’s perspective either, it seemed like The Dream Thieves set the precedent that Ronan’s voice would continue to be featured throughout the remainder of the series. Despite the fact that The Dream Thieves is devoted almost entirely to the exploration of the dark and hot-headed character, Ronan is the type of figure whose complexity always makes one want more. Though he’s never necessarily been the main focus, he remains a bit of a superstar, a fan-favorite for his thrill seeking attitude, dream powers, cussing, and constant inner turmoil that manifests as outward anger. Though the choice to omit his perspective allows a character who has a certain appeal due to his mystery remain mysterious, and despite the fact that he still has plenty of appearances and interaction in the novel, the absence of his infectious perspective can’t help but be criticized.

A real highlight of the novel is Maggie Stiefvater’s prose, which manages to be both poetic and beautiful without being pretentious: “They sat between ascendant oaks under a stolen summer sky. Roots and rocks buckled up through the moist ground around them. The hazy air was nothing like the overcast fall chill they’d just left behind. They had longed for summer, and so Cabeswater had given them summer” (Stiefvater 12). It is refreshing to find a novel of this kind, a young adult paranormal fantasy, that emphasizes the importance of word choice. The book even goes so far as to discuss some of these words in the text itself:

Adam Parrish was lonesome.

 

There is no good word for the opposite of lonesome. One might be tempted to suggest togetherness or contentment, but the fact that these two other words bear definitions unrelated to each other perfectly displays why lonesome cannot be properly mirrored. It does not mean solitude, nor alone, nor lonely, although lonesome can contain all of those words in itself. (Stiefvater 28)

This focus on craft and pretty prose greatly contributes to the novel’s thick atmosphere. When things are beautiful they are warm, almost nostalgically beautiful, and when they are frightening they are genuinely chilling, unnerving, questions without answers whispered to the dark. The novel ends up being a lovely example of “show don’t tell,” describing and coloring just the right elements to help facilitate the reader’s imagining of the hushed and haunting beauty of Henrietta and its otherworldly nooks and crannies.

In addition to the mysteries of the overarching plot, Stiefvater continues to have some of the most satisfying and well punctuated character development in the genre. The series has proven to be a great example of a “slow burn,” and Blue Lily, Lily Blue continues not to rush despite the short time frame of one year that the series takes place over. In fact, though the books in the series are obviously connected in key ways, they can also feel strangely stand aloneish. This is likely because, though the series is threaded together by mystery and intrigue, Stiefvater often seems to use the plot as setup for character study. Characters grow and learn naturally and gradually, and the romance that is present is not sudden but rather lends to the sense of people actually getting to know one another. The punctuating moments of character development are successful not so much because one can see them (though there is that) but feel them. As a result of all this Blue Lily, Lily Blue remains lacking in obvious literal physical action (there are certainly no giant night terror versus fire dragon battles in this installment) and instead remains fundamentally pleasurable for its well crafted rising narrative action. The plot and its many mysteries provides a sense of connection to the series, a road to follow, and the desire for interaction or conversation between Blue and Gansey, Ronan and Adam, or whoever, drives the reader voraciously down that path.

Something more notable about this particular installment in the series is the increased level of humor, primarily thanks to the addition of two new characters: Jesse Dittley and Greenmantle. Jesse Dittley is introduced early in the novel as a hickish loudmouth, and the initial impression is that his all caps speech would get annoying. Instead, the character is surprisingly heartwarming, and Stiefvater plays with the expectation of the characters stupidity in order to reveal an underappreciated wisdom. Expectation is also a key word when considering Colin Greenmantle, the novel’s supposed antagonist. In every Raven Cycle novel thus far the villain, or the person perceived to be as such, is given perspective chapters. This is always an engaging and appreciable choice, and this time Stiefvater is clearly inviting her audience to be in on the joke. The character is a collector of paranormal objects that has conversations with hit men without pants, enjoys reading aloud the descriptions of gourmet cheeses, and is too concerned about the possibility of banging his super hot, and far more driven, wife Piper to be worried about killing people himself, and thus has his flunkies do it. Greenmantle ends up being a character that is delightfully cowardly, enjoyable for his incompetence, and an obvious red herring for the true threat of the novel. It could be said that because of his ineptitude he doesn’t challenge or push the characters in any marginal way. However, this is tenuous in a series like the Raven Cycle, where the villains never seem like as much of a threat or a challenge as the heroes do to themselves and to each other. Overall, Greenmantle contributes to some well appreciated chuckles, and thanks to him and Jesse in addition to the continued escapades of Blue’s large psychic family, Blue Lily, Lily Blue is funnier than any instance of the Raven Cycle thus far and this is the main point of variety for the book. Just as Stiefvater tried her hand at cinematic action in The Dream Thieves, she spices things up with tongue in cheek comedy here, always ensuring that these elements contribute to the thematic whole.

Blue Lily, Lily Blue is a novel that stands perfectly well on its own, or at least as a part of its respective series, but has some enticing contrasts to other novels of its genre, section, and age range. It knows that a character’s internal choice is more exciting than the most daring of stunts, or that that stunt is more impressive because of the choice to do it, and that silence can be filled with so much, that calm and quiet can be more riveting than sound and fury. The novel navigates both extremes and the in-between at its own pace, timing the release of each of its sentiments with careful precision. Stiefvater has created a world of strange phenomena, sprinkled with the tarot, ghosts, European history, and what feels like real magic. She does an incredible job at making the reader ask “what the hell was that!?” and then having them feel good about not knowing. It is a space that is pleasurable to explore and evokes the satisfaction in true discovery, whether the thing learned is the location of an underground valley of bones, or a revelation about a person. If anyone has an interest in meandering through such a place, with people they grow to care for on unexpected levels, then they should venture into the Raven Cycle and Blue Lily, Lily Blue and be awakened to the possibilities of great young adult literature.

Works Cited

Stiefvater, Maggie. Blue Lily, Lily Blue. U.S.A: Scholastic, 2014. Print.

Image Citation

Blue Lily, Lily Blue cover. Digital image. Fountainbookstore. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Dec. 2014. <http://www.fountainbookstore.com/files/fountain/files/bluelilylilyblue.jpg&gt;.