Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Book Title: Blue Lily, Lily Blue

Author: Maggie Stiefvater
Series: The Raven Cycle #3

Date Started: September 13th 2015

Date Completed: October 1st 2015

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, Contemporary, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Stars

Final Rating: Three stars

Review:

Blue Lily, Lily Blue ended up just being a load of smoke and mirrors - it looks pretty on the surface and has a couple of cool moments, but there's no real substance to any of it. Compared to the first book it felt so unnecessary, and I seemed to lose sight of the characters I'd fallen in love with.

Steifvater's writing can be very beautiful sometimes: she has the ability to create such amazingly vivid pictures with actually very little information. The only problem is there need to be pretty locations for her to describe in the first place. Though we still have Cabeswater, the majority of the book is set elsewhere in the almost dreary normal world. What I've liked about this series is its ability to turn the normal into something exciting and new without going over-the-top with its supernatural elements. The Dream Thieves pushed at the boundaries a little bit, but this time it feels like we've stepped back completely out of the danger zone - but now there's nothing really left to be beautiful. Similarly with the characters, Steifvater's been pushing at how far she can go without it being unrealistic but has taken a few too many steps back into safety for the penultimate novel.

Something I loved about the previous books in this series is that they each had their own stories, but it definitely felt like you were progressing towards something much bigger that spanned over everything. I didn't feel that with this novel, and that was probably what disappointed me most. There was no direction to the plot, and by the end I don't even think we've progressed in either story or characters from the last book - a filler-book without even any reason to add stuff in the middle.

There were times when I thought we were heading towards a serious, mature subject while Stiefvater needed time to pass in the story for some reason, and so the slow pace was going to focus on darker things. But as soon as we got near it had to go and be silly: Adam gets in serious financial trouble and the others joke about it and ultimately leave it, another character talks about anxiety but it takes two sentences for it to become some supernatural super power and is never mentioned again. There's just so much wasted potential and it's so frustrating to read it there and watch it just get pushed away. It's not just mature subjects, it feels like interesting characters get ignored, and the beautiful imagery isn't given enough time to shine.

The conclusion was also underwhelming for me; we've had two different kinds of climaxes to these books so far, and I was okay to go with a slower resolution for now, especially since the final book better be exciting enough to make up for it. But since there didn't feel like there was any end goal for the story there wasn't really any resolution to achieve. We're definitely not given any answers to anything and are just led on further into complications (again, it was alright earlier in the series because we weren't even sure there WERE any answers, but now that we do it just feel like we're being manipulated just so one more book can be added to the conventional trilogy).

I really wish we could see more interesting pairings with the characters more often. The chapters with Ronan and Adam, and Persephone and Adam were definitely the most interesting for me here because they weren't completely predictable. I think there's a lot of wasted potential with actually quite a diverse set of characters.

I'm still pretty indifferent to Blue. She still doesn't feel like a protagonist, and for all of her quirkiness ends up quite bland when put next to the boys who have been developed quite a bit more. This is probably more to do with the fact we see the boys with different people in depth a lot more than we do with Blue; she tends to jump around but never really settle, and so it's harder to develop a sort of 'fictional-friendship' when she doesn't so much (or realistically at least).

Gainsay still edges a little closer to the stereotypical arrogant male interest that actually has deep care for his friends for me. It's not the worst trope, and I do like Gansey as a character, but I keeping hoping for it to turn in a slightly different direction. Likewise with Ronan and Noah, I'd like to be a bit surprised by them every now and then. Adam's slightly different in the way that he does have these very developed plot lines, but there's still that tinge of silliness and trivialness that shouldn't be there.

I found the pacing difficult here because it didn't feel like anything was happening. I struggled to keep my attention on the prose, and even the descriptive landscapes that had captivated me previously weren't there to keep my focus. I'm sure that not having complete attention on the story really affected my enjoyment, but at the end of the day, if it doesn't hold my attention that's a big issue.

My disappointment might be a little exaggerated from the reading slump I'm in, but regardless I had issues with The Dream Thieves and those same problems have just grown more into this book. I'm really hoping since The Raven King is the conclusion it'll finally get us to a point in the story where relevant things happen, but until then I can't say I'm happy with how the series has developed since the brilliant start with The Raven Boys.

Image Source - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22978079-blue-lily-lily-blue