The Raven Boys

Blue Sargent is the only member of her family not gifted with clairvoyance—the ability to see the future. Instead, she has a boosting effect that strengthens other supernatural abilities and magic. Since she was six years old, Blue has been told that her true love would die as a result of her kissing him. Over the years, Blue has wondered about the prophecy, but now that she’s 16, she thinks it’s fake, something she questions when her Aunt Neeve visits and tells her, “This is the year you’ll fall in love” (10).

On St. Mark’s Eve, Blue and Neeve sit in the local graveyard waiting for the spirits of those who will die in the next year to arrive. As they wait, Blue explains her boosting ability. Neeve tries to reassure her that boosting is valuable and that Blue shouldn’t feel ashamed of not being clairvoyant. Blue shrugs this off because “she wasn’t interested in telling other people’s futures. She was interested in going out and finding her own” (15). Neeve asks if Blue attends the nearby Aglionby Academy, and Blue explains it’s a school for rich boys that she avoids because the boys who go there are jerks.

When the spirits arrive, Blue is shocked to find she can see one—a boy about her age. He wears the raven-adorned sweater of Aglionby Academy and says his name is Gansey. Blue asks Neeve why she can see him, to which Neeve says there are only two reasons non-seers would see spirits: “Either you’re his true love [...] or you killed him” (22).

At the same time Blue and Neeve were at the graveyard, Gansey was sitting nearby with a device that records paranormal activity, as part of his ongoing mission to find a ley line and the tomb of King Glendower. Playing back the recording, Gansey hears the words his spirit spoke to Blue, and while he’s confused at hearing his voice when he didn’t speak, he’s convinced he’s found a ley line and that this “meant the start of something different, although he didn’t know what yet” (33).

The spirits drew on Blue’s energy at the graveyard, so she sleeps late the following morning and misses school. There’s no way for Blue to prevent Gansey’s death, but Blue’s mother won’t stop her from trying because seeing him means Blue is fated to meet him. Blue scoffs at this, griping that fate “is a very weighty word to throw around before breakfast” (39). Neeve tries to see what kills Gansey, but her vision shows him disappearing into a place where visions don’t work. Blue is disappointed but resolves to go on with her life, and before she leaves the house, her mother says, “I don’t have to tell you not to kiss anyone, right?” (43).

At the warehouse Gansey converted to an apartment, which he shares with roommates Ronan and Noah, Gansey explains his theories about Glendower to Ronan’s brother and his girlfriend, leaving out his beliefs that the king is sleeping (not dead) and that he’ll grant a wish to whoever wakes him. Ronan’s brother and his girlfriend leave after the brother’s quarrel, and the roommates, plus their friend Adam, get dinner and start unraveling the mystery of Gansey’s recording. Adam thinks about how he doesn’t believe in the supernatural like Gansey does. Adam also seeks Glendower, but where Gansey does so to make certain he is useful to the world, Adam simply “needed that royal favor” (57).

At Aglionby Academy, Latin teacher Barrington Whelk runs into another teacher, who comments on Gansey’s search for ley lines. Whelk is startled because he also searched for ley lines when he was a student at the school, and it led to the death of his roommate. Hearing about Gansey’s search fills Whelk with hope he hasn’t felt in a long time, and he ends the chapter thinking “that Czerny’s death wasn’t for nothing after all” (62).

Blue works part time at a pizza parlor where Aglionby boys hang out, and tonight, Gansey’s there with the other boys, though Blue doesn’t recognize him. Blue’s mother calls to tell her Gansey scheduled a reading for the following afternoon, and while Blue is distracted wondering if he’s the true love she’ll kill, Gansey approaches to ask if she’ll talk to Adam, who thinks she’s pretty. When Blue argues she can’t just stop working to talk because she has to earn money, Gansey offers to pay her for her time. Blue likens this to prostitution, and though Gansey seems embarrassed, Blue is annoyed at his presumptuous attitude. Gansey returns to his table, and Blue goes into the kitchen, thinking that “Neeve had to be wrong. She’d never fall in love with one of them” (70).

At the table, Gansey and Adam discuss the ley lines while Gansey feels guilty about offending Blue. Their discussion is interrupted by news that Ronan’s brother showed up, and the boys are fighting in the parking lot. Gansey breaks up the fight by mentioning Ronan’s father, who’s death formed a wedge between Ronan and his brother. Gansey and Adam find it odd that Ronan’s brother came to this restaurant on a date, as it isn’t impressive at all, and they wonder if he’s also seeking the ley lines and Glendower. Gansey has a hard time believing that’s the case, but even so, “the suggestion of that possibility gave him a peculiarly unpleasant feeling” (83).

When she gets off work, Blue runs into Adam in the parking lot. He apologizes for Gansey’s behavior, and Blue finds herself drawn to his honesty. She wants to get to know him, but the prophecy of her life keeps her from doing so because “even the very best outcome here could only end in torment” (87). Adam leaves, and Blue finds a journal Gansey left behind full of his research into ley lines and Glendower. Though she still doesn’t know the boy is Gansey, she’s amazed at the idea that a raven boy could have such a book because they don’t seem like the type. For a moment, Blue wishes Adam was Gansey and the journal’s owner, but she takes it back immediately “because whoever Gansey was, he didn’t have long to live” (91).

Gansey wakes to a call from a professor friend, who theorizes that ley lines, like Glendower, sleep and that they can be woken with a specific ritual. Gansey is seized by an urge to start immediately and blow off school because, unlike everything else in his life, finding Glendower is “something without a price tag. Something earned” (95). He goes to tell Ronan this new information but finds him gone. Worried Ronan will harm himself, Gansey finds him in the nearby church, drunk and holding a baby raven.