friends

The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel, adapted from Maggie Stiefvater's book by Stephanie Williams, illustrated by Sas Milledge with colors by Abel Ko:

The dialogue in this adaptation is faithful to the novel, but perhaps too faithful. I think Williams missed an opportunity to take some of the novel's internal reflection and transform it into dialogue. Like it would have been easy, and told us a lot about both of them, to have Blue lean over to a coworker and mutter, "Check out President Cellphone," when Gansey first walks into Nino's.

That means this is missing a lot of the character work that you get in the novel, like Gansey's utter devotion to the Pig (which I don't think is ever called by name here?). Blue's initial disgust for Gansey also seems much weaker. Oddly, 300 Fox Way is exactly as empty as the novel makes it, with only the three main psychics, and Blue and Calla (briefly) present on the page. That's one thing that would have been easy to show in this visual format, just fill the panels with all those aunts and cousins Blue swears are in the house but who never seem to impact much of anything except the state of the kitchen sink. (Don't tell me the house is crowded and then not show me constant fighting over who gets to use the bathroom. This bothers me every time I read the book.)(Though this does fix Blue's age to match the rest of the series, and I can't tell you how happy I was that her explanation to Adam got cut off before she could say "young.")

As an adaptation, it feels watered down, and I can't judge it as a standalone graphic novel because I've read the book so many times I brought all that with me and also missed the things it left out. Like Gansey's Topsiders, and Blue's weird clothes, and Adam's Coke shirt. Not that any of these things are important on their own, but they tell us something about the characters. That Gansey looks like he came out of a yachting magazine and has about the same amount of understanding about the real world as if he did, and how Blue's punk do-it-yourself ethos applies not just to her clothing and her room, but her approach to life, and that for the psychics, Adam, in that crowd of Raven Boys, is at first only as memorable as the slogan on his t-shirt. The detailed artwork is gorgeous, however, especially the lush colors of Cabeswater, and Ronan's back tattoo is fucking amazing, and I support the decision to make Blue and her family Hispanic because this is a very white story otherwise.

So for me, this is a nice effort, and a pleasant read, and it gets a lot right, but mostly it just made me want to read the book again, as, inevitably, all graphic novel adaptations do. But it might be perfect for reluctant readers or those who prefer graphic novels.

Contains: child abuse and domestic violence; wasps; reference to past suicide attempt; the text is small, thin, and faint enough that it's difficult to read in print.