The Zen Leaf

1. Book 4 of the Raven Cycle.

2. There will be no spoilers at all in this review (book or series).

3. I honestly considered simply writing the word LOVE!!!!! on this review and being done with it.

4. I read this book two days before its official release. I probably could have read it earlier, like during the Readathon. That would have been good, because this is the way they really happened: I heard that people had gotten their hands on copies of this book early through Twitter on the 19th. Book supposed to release on the 26th. Unfortunately, I heard it after I’d already been at the book store for a new bullet journal moleskine, so I figured this was an isolated incident. It wasn’t. Saw more mentions of it after RaT, so I went to my B&N on Sunday and yes, it was there. Which meant that because of my sore, puffy, tired eyes from RaT and lack of sleep, it took nearly 10 hours to read this book.

5. Beyond the time it took to read it, or my extreme sleepiness, I think I might have missed crucial plot points. But that’s okay, because I plan to read it six times in a row, via print and audio, before moving on to other worlds/books.

6. The question everyone always asks is “Does Gansey die?” I’m not going to tell you. I said before: no spoilers. And for me, this was never the question. Yes, I love Gansey, and yes, I wanted him to live a happily ever after with everyone else, but for me, this series was never about who dies or who ends up with who or predicting what might happen next. I had no theories, and I was never particularly drawn to theories, because I adored the characters so much that it didn’t matter to me WHAT happened, just that I get to spend more time with Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, Noah, etc etc etc.

7. Is it a good book, beyond the fact that I spent more time with some of my favorite characters ever? Yes. Yes it is. It’s heart-warning and terrifying and spine-crawlingly creepy and heart-stopping and squee-worthy and all the rest. It’s the perfect end to this quartet (though I would be very happy to have later volumes, or spin-offs, or anything else…).

And with that, I leave this post with seven entries, because threes and sevens are special numbers.

Revisited on audio: I immediately followed the print-reading with multiple audio-listens. The audio (read by Will Patton) is, as usual, brilliant, and there were things I caught in the audio version that I hadn’t caught the first time around. Also, I totally need more stories from and after this series, whether from the author or from fan-fiction, I don’t care… (Someone needs to write me the whole of the toga party, for instance.)