appearance

[unknowable]

As Adam is a book character, without an easy visual representation to point to and say 'that's what he looks like', I've compiled some quotes from the books about what other characters see when they look at Adam. The PB I use for him is Victor Norlander, but if you want a little more in-depth idea of how Adam appears to the world, here you go. Adam is most often described as elegant, fine-boned, and attractive in a strange, somewhat otherworldly way. As the books go on, he becomes more and more distant and inhuman.


physical appearance

"The knot of Adam's tie was neat above the collar of his sweater. One slender hand pressed Ronan's thin cell phone tightly to his ear."

"Unlike Ronan, Adam's Aglionby sweater was secondhand, but he'd taken great care to be certain it was impeccable. He was slim and tall, with dusty hair unevenly cropped above a fine-boned, tanned face. He was a sepia photograph."

"And the third was - elegant. It was not the right word for him, but it was close. He was fine boned and a little fragile-looking, with blue eyes pretty enough for a girl."

"He looked at home here, his hair the same colorless brown as the tips of old grass, and he looked more handsome than Blue remembered."

"Adam Parrish, gaunt and fair"

"As always, his features intrigued Blue. They were not quite conventionally handsome, but they were interesting. He had the typical Henrietta prominent cheekbones and deep-set eyes, but his version of them was more delicate. It made him seem a little alien. A little impenetrable."

"Beside him stood Adam, his strange and beautiful face pale above the slender dark of his own suit."

"He hadn't noticed that he didn't look like everyone else until he got to high school, when everyone else started noticing. He didn't know if he was good-looking or bad-looking - only that he was different-looking. It was up to interpretation whether the strangeness of his face was beautiful or ugly."

"Both of the boys were unsettling - Adam Parrish, in particular, had a curious face. Not as in, he was a curious person. But rather that there was something peculiar about his facial features. He was an alien, handsome specimen of this western Virginia species; feather-boned, hollow-cheeked, eyebrows fair and barely visible. He was feral and raw-boned by way of those Civil War portraits. Brother fought brother while their farms ran to ruins -"

demeanor

"Sometimes, after Adam had been hit, there was something remote and absent in his eyes, like his body belonged to someone else."

"When he looked back at her, he still wore a wary expression, and Blue saw that this expression - a wrinkle pinched between his eyebrows, mouth tense - was his normal one. It fit his features perfectly, matched up with every line around his mouth and eyes. This Aglionby boy isn't often happy, she thought."

"She looked at his face, fragile and strange under the bruise. It was easy to read him as shy or uncertain, she thought, but he really wasn't either. ... Adam was just quiet. He wasn't lost for words, he was observing."

"The thing was, Ronan knew what a face looked like, just before it was about to break. He'd seen it in the mirror often enough. Adam had fracture lines all over him."

"Adam was different since making the bargain with Cabeswater. Stronger, stranger, farther away. It was hard not to stare at the odd and elegant lines of his face." (may only apply if you are ronan tbh)

"Adam's expression was ferocious and pleased; Gansey was at once proud to know him and uncertain he did at all."

"His face was strange and delicate in the sharp light of Gansey's head beam. Swiftly, and without explanation, he reached out to touch the cavern wall. Although he was not a dream thing, he was now one of Cabeswater's things, and it was hard not to see it in the way his fingers spidered across the wall and in the blackness of his eyes as they gazed at nothing."

"Adam narrowed his eyes. There was something different about him. Or maybe there was just something different between him and Henry. Henry was a boy. Adam was a -

Gansey didn't know."

"No one was talking to Adam. It wasn't difficult to understand this: Adam didn't look like someone you could talk to, just then. There was something more frightening about him than there was about the circle. Like the bare ground, there was nothing inherently unusual about his appearance. But in context, surrounded by brick buildings, he didn't... belong."