The Raven King discussion

Hey guys! I finished this series a while back, but I can't seem to get these characters out of my head. They're very well written and distinctly unique from most other characters I've encountered since finishing the series.

What I wanted to discuss was alternate endings to The Raven King, more specifically the meaning and usefulness of having *SPOILER* Gansey die, ... but then coming back?

What are your thoughts? What do you think this adds to the story? Was it necessary, if so then why? Is there a better way this could have worked? Is Gansey really "Gansey" now that he's come back from the dead?

His death, I thought, was totally lame. He just... fell over. It was kind of hilarious. I never thought the kiss itself would kill the soulmate--that wasn't ever in the wording of the prophecies. It was just "If you kiss your true love, he will die" it never said how. I figured he'd get stabbed or some freak accident would occur. Or she'd kiss him while he was bleeding out, and he'd die after the kiss not because of the kiss, but just because he was going to anyway.

But that aside, I his death wasn't sad. It wasn't even heroic, really, it didn't seem like a sacrifice. Their plan was to bring him back again, for his third life (boy really needs to calm down with his resurrections), and then they did it. Instead of sacrificing Gansey to save Cabeswater, then Cabeswater sacrificing itself to bring back Gansey, couldn't Cabeswater just been asked to sacrifice itself to kill the demon? Life for life? The drama of the scene was completely undercut by the knowledge we knew the death wasn't permanent, because the boys said it wouldn't be--and this is a YA book, so we knew it wouldn't.

And there really wasn't much on how different he is now. I thought since he was infused with tree-people from the forest, that he'd feel more similar to Blue, but that wasn't mentioned.

How else do you think it could have played out that would have been better fitting? I think there was another way but I'm not sure how...