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This is a kissing book. The Raven Boys, Prologue through Chapter 9

I was doing some reread notes for "The Raven Boys" by Maggie Steifvater and they got long!

Notes below go through pretty sequentially but I didn't try to explain the plot or avoid spoilers so if you are thinking of reading these books and don't know What The Deal is With Ronan or What the Deal is With Noah or how the romance plots shake out and you don't want to be spoiled then probably don't read...

Also a lot of this is about Gansey, because that's how i roll.

Prologue - Blue (I'm marking POV for each chapter)

I will be tracking thoughts on whose story this is + what kind of story they think they are in but we start with Blue:

“Blue Sargent had forgotten how many times she’d been told she would kill her true love.”

This is, unfortunately, a kissing book. No one is angrier about this than Blue.

1. Blue

"Blue never got tired of feeling particularly needed, but sometimes she wished 'needed' felt less like a synonym for 'useful'. This re her family using her magic, which she can't access herself, but interesting rhyme w/ a lot of Adam stuff. It foreshadows why she and Adam aren’t going to work out -- as discussed at length later, he’s too stuck in *needing* to know how to want, and needing has a complicated relationship with “what can you do for me?” This will relate to Adam and Gansey in the next chapter.

2. Gansey

First Gansey POV: It's broken up by description so not as often quoted but v important that Gansey & Ronan's first canonical dialogue is

G: It's me.

R: You missed World Hist. I thought you were dead in a ditch.

G: Did you get notes for me?

R: No. I thought you were dead in a ditch.

Gansey then sulks about how he would have gotten notes for Ronan which 1. As often as Ronan skips class? 2. Imagine Ronan coming back from wherever + Gansey hands him notes + Ronan makes any face other than the one you make at a cat that hands you a dead vole? Gansey clearly means 'in the hypothetical situation Ronan was involuntarily absent and actually WANTED notes'

Adam is actually mentioned by name before Ronan is, when Gansey thinks, 'Adam, friend of cars everywhere, might have been able to determine what was wrong with [the Camaro] this time.' This rhymes with Blue, in chapter 1, wrestling with being needed and being useful. Adam, though, probably sees being useful to Gansey as a high compliment and one that he trusts and that sits with him more easily than the complicated idea of his friendship and company being wanted.

If Blue is reluctantly in a kissing book, Gansey is starring in a boys' adventure that both appreciates and condescends to him: ‘A museum curator in New Mexico had once told him, “Son, you have an uncanny knack for discovering oddities.” And more of this, wherein he’s called ‘slick’ and ‘boy.’ ‘Sport’ is not in here but you can imagine it. Gifted child syndrome, Gansey ostensibly does not want to be treated like a kid but he also isn't sure he wants to be a full on actual adult because being Boy Wonder is part of the Thing

3. Blue

(Another Blue chapter, I'm sure it's lovely because Blue is lovely and Fox Way is great, I just didn't take any notes)

4. Adam

First Adam POV. Whjen you get through the prologue and first 3 chapters of Raven Boys you may be like 'these books are less queer than i thought' and then Adam's narration comes barreling in talking about 'male nakedness' in the form of Gansey's unmade bed + how Gansey looks like a war hero because he has a straight Anglo Saxon nose and doesn’t come his hair. (I do not think that 'The Raven Boys' itself is literally textually queer in any way that I can recall but these boys sure are trying to take it there.)

By the end of the series Gansey's dominant trait is Being Really Fucking Obsessed With Everything That Is Going on With His Friends so it's funny that his first POV chapter is mostly about His Quest + he basically thinks of Ronan + Adam as his staff. Then Adam's POV chapter ends with Gansey still ordering them around but 'In three different ways, he'd earned them all days or weeks or months before, and when it came to it they'd all follow him anywhere.”

Gansey is absolutely the series' Decoy Protagonist and already by this point we know he's actually the damsel in Blue's kissing book. Meanwhile Adam biding his time 'I'd sure like to do some protagonisting eventually but perhaps it's Not My Place'? (future fan fave) and Ronan going 'well i'm not sharing any of the cool parts of my story yet but trust me I'll be the Breakout Character in Book 2'

I’ve been thinking more about the extent to which Adam basically has a usurper arc. He never actually IS that because he always loves Gansey too much for his envy to be malicious. He never wants to displace Gansey, just to be able to see himself as equal. (Also, this is counterbalanced by the love triangle swinging the opposite way. Adam going through the story wanting to take Gansey's girl would be more expected I think?)

In retrospect I’ve thought of Raven Boys as Adam's book, but as I was reading through I noticed how much of it is actually alternating Blue & Gansey chapters. Adam only has 8 POV chapters, Gansey has 12, and Blue has 23 counting the prologue(though I think hers are mostly shorter). The villain that no one cares about has 5 short chapters. But the book starts and ends with Blue, and even the “Raven Boys” title, which makes it sound like it’s about the boys, is nestled in Blue’s POV. She’s the one who names them and claims them. So to the extent it makes sense to assign a book to each character, probably this book is Blue’s, and ‘Blue Lily, Lily Blue,’ despite the title, is essentially about Adam’s absolutely gorgeous arc, with Blue and her search for her mom as the B plot and Ronan and Gansey essentially functioning as their love interests. (I don’t have my copy of that one to do a chapter count but that’s my guess.)

Still, TRB Adam makes a very big impression in not a lot of space. Moving toward the climax his role gets bigger, but he’s really calling his shot in his first POV.

5. Whelk

i get to chapter 5 going 'oh good Blue again and it's ABSOLUTELY a Barrington Whelk chapter. Literally no one cares, and I say this as someone who very much digs the villains in the later books. Though I do appreciate Maggie doing the work on 'a name even Richard Campbell 'Dick' Gansey III can admit is a little ridiculous'

ok but lol for the scene where the English teacher sees that Ronan turned in his Latin homework and is like YOU GOT LYNCH TO TURN IN A PAPER, HOW? and then the teacher is like 'oh wait you have him with Gansey nvm those two are physically attached to each other.' also poor Whelk is such an obvious narc that he's literally the only person Gansey hasn't babbled to about ley lines + ghost hunting. (I have to imagine that this required Adam pointing out to him that Whelk is an obvious narc, because Gansey is generally not suspicious ENOUGH)

Visualizing Richard Gansey III telling his history teacher 'I might be late for class next Thursday because it's St. Mark's Day which of course is the day after St. Mark's Eve and I have to sleep in my car in a church parking lot and try to make audio recordings of ghosts. Don't worry, Ronan will get notes for me.'

Teacher (out loud): thank you for telling me.

Teacher (internally): 1. Well, that sounds like you. 2. We both knew Ronan will do no such thing.

6. Blue

The chapter in which Richard Gansey III has the bad timing to be a real live, marginally heterosexual prep school idiot, entering Blue's line of sight when she's thinking about the mysterious Gansey who she's supposed to fall in love with and murder.

His first attempt to impress her has very Darcy’s first proposal from ‘Pride & Prejudice’ energy. (I’m trying to stick with analyzing the text but this HAS TO BE in Maggie’s mind somewhere). ‘“I certainly hope so,” he said, with less hope and more certainty.’

His apology is also amazingly bad. Mostly because it’s so oblivious of the power dynamics that he’s already shown himself to be oblivious of by treating his pizza waitress like she works in a hostess club and he can just pay her boss for the use of her time. “I’m sorry you’re insulted, I see where you’re coming from, but I feel it’s a little unfair that you’re not doing the same for me.” AGAIN. Extreme Fitzwilliam Darcy energy.

It also actually works the way Pride & Prejudice works because Blue WILL get to like him better as she knows more about him -- and the text gives the reader the chance to see the same shift over the next couple Gansey POV chapters. (Again, trying to stick to the text -- I realize Gansey doesn’t work for everybody but there’s SO MUCH going on in the narration to dig into IF he’s someone you’re inclined to connect to)

7. Gansey

This chapter and chapter 9 are the big shifts in Gansey POV. But first I must observe the line that “Ronan had picked off all his moving dolly scabs and would’ve picked off Adam’s as well if he’d let him.” SO TEENAGE.

There’s a common thread with both Gansey and Adam’s third person narration that is holding off on telling us their biggest secrets and anxieties. So Gansey’s first POV chapter IS very much Gansey as the protagonist he wants to present to us. He’s caught up in his own quest, the others are his sidekicks.

In this chapter after he strikes out with Blue, Gansey again starts being focused on the quest and he begins by thinking about how mean Blue was and how he did Adam a favor by blowing his chance with her, and then “It was possible he had once again been oblivious about money. He hadn’t meant to be offensive, but, in retrospect, it was possible he had been. This was going to eat at him all evening. He vowed, as he had a hundred times before, to consider his words better.” SUCH formality. On the next page, he’s noting that the waitress who actually served them left her phone number, and we get a defensive, “She clearly hadn’t found him condescending." and then a paragraph break and a shift. " Which was because she hadn’t heard him speak.

“All night. This was going to bother him <em>all night</eM>.” And this starts to feel like Gansey finally letting the narrator in below the facade.

Once we’re in there, we immediately learn that he’s worried about Adam and trying to figure out if there’s a way he can convince Adam to sleep better and take better care of himself without it turning into a fight. He considers framing it selfishly ‘you’re no good to ME’ but figures Adam will see through it.

There’s never a direct connection made in text, but the dive into how worried Gansey is about Adam comes right after Gansey trying to pick up a girl that he thinks Adam likes. There’s clearly some jumble of “maybe Adam get laid + be happy?' and 'Maybe girl do emotional support things that I am failing at?' (Ironically, Gansey’s encounter with her puts Gansey off the emotional support idea because Blue Sargent ain't gonna be nobody's manic pixie dream girl but it certainly seems like her willingness to tell Gansey off makes her more appealing to Adam)

The rest of the chapter is the Lynch brothers parking lot fight (and don't get me wrong i have lots of thoughts on the Lynch Bros' parking lot fight but I feel like i've yelled about that a lot already and on this read i was focused on Gansey), which further establishes how much responsibility Gansey has taken on for his friends. Also the first allusion to Adam being abused comes here (not in Adam’s POV section) when Gansey reflects on what Adam acts like 'after he'd been hit' compared to Ronan. This is really setting up themes for the next Gansey chapter, which is a doozy.

8. Blue (she meets Adam for real, it’s cute; she meets Gansey’s journal, refuses to acknowledge it belongs to him because it’s clearly cooler than he is; also a lot here hinges on Gansey not having his name in his journal and on Adam never mentioning Gansey by name but I’ll allow it because it lets the later reveal scene work; also in the next book, when Gansey’s trying to figure out if it’s somehow okay for him and Blue to date, he says that ‘Adam didn’t even ASK me to talk to you’ like it’s some kind of reveal instead of ‘definitely the first thing Adam made sure to tell her was “I was not a party to his bullshit.”)

9. Gansey

OK, so this chapter. Yeah (CW for some discussion of abuse and suicide)

The first section is some exposition via Gansey’s phone call with Malory and the narration starts to almost get to telling us the root of the Glendower obsession and why it’s personal, though we won’t really learn it until he tells Blue (it's funny how we mostly learn characters' big secrets outside their own pov chapters; granted, Ronan doesn’t have any chapters here, and Adam has fewer, but we’re gonna learn much more about Adam’s background from Gansey).

Then it really gets in gear when Gansey realizes Ronan is missing and has to make the call b/t the likelihood Ronan's about to jump off a bridge vs. the chance of Adam getting caught and beat up if Gansey calls him for help. 'It wasn't an easy thing to leave the Parrish household in the middle of the night. The consequences of getting caught could leave physical evidence, and it was getting too warm for long sleeves. Gansey felt wretched for asking this of him.”

It was never my personal experience but the 17 year old's 'I have to make calls about keeping my friends alive and safe because there is no adult/official intervention that i can imagine making things better' is an experience i recognize, and even Gansey’s almost comical level of privilege doesn’t give him but so much ability to intervene.

Obviously Adam can say no, he's very much in “let Ronan solve his own problems, which were mostly caused by Ronan” mode at this point. Gansey doesn’t take it for granted that Adam is going to say yes but Adam's not going to refuse because 1. He recognizes the urgency 2. He isn't going to plead his own safety over Ronan's, not to Gansey.

(Side note, I read a post the other day that made me think that it was canon that Ronan’s previous hospitalization was precipitated by a fight with Declan, which is a fairly big thing I had left out when I was writing Declan POV on that incident, but it’s not actually text here -- maybe it is in Dream Thieves? What is stated is that the fight with Declan makes both Gansey and Adam realize that Ronan’s mental state is serious).

I keep going back and forth on whether Gansey’s POV on Adam or on Ronan in this chapter is more devastating but 'Gansey wasn't naive; he carried no illusions that he'd ever recover the Ronan Lynch he'd known before Niall died. But he didn’t want to lose the Ronan Lynch he had now.” That is some shit. Because the text is literally telling us that Gansey experienced Ronan’s grief and depression as his own loss, and he feels like he’s nurturing the ghost/ revenant of a friend who isn’t with him anymore. This is, all at the same time 1) An extremely shitty way to think about a grieving and depressed friend. 2) an understandable way to cope with these feelings when you’re in the middle of them, 3) Dramatically ironic for a couple reasons.

Dramatic irony one: Gansey, buddy, you’re about to become Blue Sargent’s ghost/revenant friend and you don’t even know it; Dramatic irony (is it dramatic irony NOW if we don’t know it until rereading?) two: the metaphor being put in place here about Ronan is what is literally going to turn out to be happening with Noah.

Now Gansey goes to find Ronan in the church and G is frightened as he thinks about ‘the afternoon he first realized there was magic in the world.’ Which is going to turn out to be The Root of His Trauma, but again we’re just sliding against it in his own POV. I do think there are some technical POV slips in this series, particularly in this book, that don’t fully work with the narration, but overall it’s a really skillful use of a tight close third that avoids telling us the things that the POV character doesn’t want to confront without feeling like cheating. (Also this issue is notably absent from Blue’s POV so far in this book, because she doesn’t have secrets to slip her denial around; that’s gonna change as the romance plot heats up in book 2.)

So now Gansey finds Ronan and, this is the scene i had to reread in my ecopy after first finishing the whole book on audio. Because they’re talking about different things (drunk Ronan saying “I couldn’t dream” and “I found Chainsaw in my head” is meaningless to Gansey at this point; and “I promised I wouldn’t do it again” is ambiguous -- earlier after the fight with Declan he’s said “I know what I promised” and here i think he actually means “I promised I wouldn’t dream at the house if I thought it would be dangerous” but it could also come out as “I promised I wouldn’t try to kill myself again” (which is not precisely what happened but they essentially stand in for the same incident; Gansey just thinks Ronan has more control of it than he does).

Once Gansey realizes it was (sort of) a false alarm, he tries to shift the conversation to Ronan getting drunk, which he apparently also told him not to do at the apartment, and now amends to “i don’t want you getting drunk anywhere” (this is dubious but understandable parenting, and Gansey’s not really pretending to be doing anything but parenting at this point).

Ronan calls Gansey a hypocrite over telling him not to get drunk; Gansey says ('with dignity') 'I drink. I do not get drunk.' Which i think is meant to establish 1.Gansey is not a goody two shoes but also 2.some WASPish classism where “my people” have dignified parties and a Gansey will never be inappropriately intoxicated because he defines what appropriate is. (P sure we never see Gansey drink beyond a couple glasses of champagne at his parents’ party so I don’t know that it’s hugely hypocritical of him, especially if he’s legitimately worried about Ronan’s drinking and mental health. But I do think that's what's being implied.)

I have seen the line interpreted as 'Gansey doesn't drink much and is thus a total lightweight' which is why i want him to get wasted off Calla's bourbon b/c she thinks 'i don't get drunk' means 'i can hold my liquor' not 'i have no idea what i'm doing'.

And then we get to Chainsaw, the baby raven that Gansey immediately sees as a SIGN they're on Glendower's trail but also Gansey has no hope of telling Ronan he can't keep the raven but he is not allowed to name it a swear.

Ronan: You little bastard.

Gansey: You can't name it that.

R: Her name's Chainsaw.

He named her already, Gansey, you never had a chance.

Finally,

G: Where did you say you found that bird again?

R: In my head.

Noah: Dangerous place.

Gansey, you need to start taking your friends seriously AND literally.

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