rest of the Raven Cycle

I don't remember now exactly why I lost interest in Dream Thieves, but I decided to read the rest of the series after all, and went through Blue Lily, Lily Blue in a few days, and The Raven King in pretty much one morning, plus a few chapters. I enjoyed them! For awhile in Blue Lily I felt very conscious that I was Reading These Books Because I Like To Keep Up With What The Kids Are Talking About In YA These Days, but eventually I got immersed. I still kind of feel that if you were only going to read one Maggie Stiefvater book ever, it should be Shiver, but I definitely like these as a series more than I liked the Shiver sequels (Linger/Whatever/the one I didn't even read), so if you're only going to read one Stiefvater *series*, go Raven Cycle.

I've been trying to figure out what to compare them to, since that's one of my favorite review-games. There's a kinship to the Dark Is Rising books - a small group of young people dealing with magic, kings and their wizards, Wales, etc - although the Raven books don't go so heavily for the trappings of myth, and they're much more teen-character-drama-driven. Emotions-wise, they're closer to Darkest Part of the Forest, although they weren't so powerful, for me. Some Sandman-territory stuff, ghosts, dreams, spontaneous fish. There are some good lines and nothing I found particularly annoying (in the last two books, at least), so, hey, a complete YA fantasy series! And there's lots of fic!