#infatuation hennyways

[princesspandoranil]

I’m sorry I just can’t see Steve with Nancy. Like Steve is the mom. Nancy? A father? I don’t think so. Steve needs to marry a man (Eddie) or an absolute lumberjack emotionally distant (b4 they work on that) and sarcastic werewolf of a woman.

[imanes]

Pls tell us why you didn’t like the raven cycle I need to hear your good taste opinion bc I do not get the obsession for those poorly plotted books on this site

alkjgkj idk about my good taste opinion sometimes things fly above my head but hennyways as far as the raven cycle is concerned i had no idea it was big on the streets of tumblr dot hell until well after i tried to give it a go lol. i get why some people love it but also i don’t really get it... i feel like there are better works out there but my impression is that this book came into a lot of people’s lives during very formative years so when i see it through that lens i can get it. but as a YA fantasy i feel like there are so many places where this story could’ve been GOOD but chose to be mediocre instead in order to favour style over substance. anyways here’s the full breakdown of my thoughts on the 2 books i read in the raven cycle:

the writing style is flowery to the point of being dense and unreadable at times, and on top of that stiefvater cannot write a satisfying conclusion to her books like it picks up momentum to do absolutely nothing with it in the end which leads me to believe that the overall conclusion of the series is going to be poorly executed as well. i also do not particularly like how heavy-handed she tries to manipulate readers into feeling a certain way about characters. speaking of characters, she truly dropped the ball repeatedly once the side characters have done their job. after that, they do not exist anymore and i think it’s a shame, as well as a bad habit (case in point: that ghost guy)

the first book was ok, i mean i was expecting the “not like other girls” treatment for blue so i wasn’t taken by surprise, and i liked the strong friendship group element which is why i read it in its entirety despite not being totally convinced. i thought it showed potential if only stiefvater could get over 1. her undigestible purple prose and 2. her tendency to make her endings totally unclimactic.

then the dream thieves came and hmm... lmao. the literal embodiment of everything i disliked about the first book but on steroid. the grey man was such a boring non-starter wishy-washy attempt at a pseudo “nuanced” character, and stiefvater took pains to not use the word “gay” for whatshisface i forgot his name like the *eDgY* one which i think is a disservice to his arc. ronan? at that point my only interest in the story was to see how the group of friends would fare but assisting to its progressive disintegration was not particularly pleasant lol. also you know how that dumb storyline with gansey and blue is going to finish like absolutely zero tension! it’s like a cw show tbh and i don’t watch those so i sure as hell won’t read them either...

so yeah idk what’s up with the infatuation with this series. to be fair i’m not a huge fan of soft magic systems because more often than not they hint at an uneven plot where magic is used to patch the holes and a deus ex machina is a big no no in my book... honestly i was just not invested after book 2, it sapped me of all interest and made zero sense to me. like maggie stiefvater has good ideas! but the execution is lacking, the interesting bits got lost in a sea of nonsense and i cannot forgive confusing climaxes that fall completely flat on their face... so i’m never going to finish the series *peace sign*