While The Raven Cycle was a quiet exploration of fate and identity, Call Down the Hawk is an adventure story with secret organisations, a dark magical underworld and even some explosions.

This is a new story, set a few months after the events of The Raven King, that hones in on the Lynch brothers but also introduces a whole cast of new characters and a set of new fun locations.

If you’re expecting more Gansey, Blue and Grey Man (from The Raven Cycle ), you’re going to be disappointed. Rest assured, Call Down the Hawk is not that. With sequel series, there’s often the concern that an author is trying to cash in on past success, that they’re essentially writing fanfic of their own creation. Things I discuss here are within the first few pages of the book.) (I won’t, however, spoil Call Down the Hawk itself. And if you read the rest of this review, you’re gonna get spoiled about that too. So if you read Call Down the Hawk first, you’re gonna get spoiled for that. A single image of life now, reminds us of what life was and how far these characters have come.Īnd then there’s the fact that Call Down the Hawk is all about Ronan’s big family secret. A single sentence between two characters unfurls a four-book legacy of emotions.

We’ve seen everything he went through to get where he is, we already care deeply about him, about his romantic relationship, about his brothers and even about his family home – the magical sanctuary where some of the story is set.Ī large part of what made Call Down the Hawk so enjoyable for me was those gentle moments that harkened back to the past. His journey over the course of the rest of the cycle is what makes him such a great main character in Call Down the Hawk. His self-hatred is literally killing him. Ronan starts out in The Raven Boys as angry, depressed and ashamed of who he is. He recently discovered the body of his murdered father, he’s been exiled from the farm where he grew up, he’s grappling with his sexuality and he has a huge family secret – a magical secret – that his late father made him promise to keep. One of those friends, Ronan Lynch, is dealing with a lot. The Raven Cycle is a meandering year-in-the-life of a group of friends searching for magic in modern day Virginia. You can read Call Down the Hawk without having read The Raven Cycle, the pertinent plot points are outlined in the first few chapters, but I don’t know that you’d want to. Call Down the Hawk is part one in a new trilogy that takes place after Maggie Stiefvater’s quadrilogy, The Raven Cycle.

Call down the hawk maggie stiefvater