Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.
Then one of them is murdered.
It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.
If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.
We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.
Summary
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson - Where do I even begin with this book? I first heard about it in the same video by lexi aka newlynova where I learned about Blood Over Bright Haven. And trust me when I say - that video hypes this book up A LOT, without really telling you ANYTHING about its central plot. And after finishing it, I can confidently say: That is the correct way to sell the book. The basic premise of The Raven Scholar is a monarchical society that is segmented into several clans, each of which worships a distinct animal deity. Every few decades, a contest is held to determine the next ruler of the Kingdom, and each clan sends one representative to take part in a contest to determine said ruler. As the video also points out, that concept might not sound very new or particularly creative. In fact, it very strongly reminded me of Divergent, a book I vaguely remember reading as a teenager. I’d be lying if I remember much of the underlying plot of Divergent, but The Raven Scholar quickly and consistently exceeds the genres and tropes that it might initially be associated with. To say any more would be a massive spoiler, so like the original video, I will leave it at that.
Review
In general, the main strengths of The Raven Scholar are its world-building, the portrayal of court politics and political intrigue, and its rapidly developing plot and recontextualising of previous scenes. The book is over 600 pages long, which makes it even longer than the novels I’ve read and reviewed so far on this website, but because of its rapid plot developments, it actually felt shorter than some of them. In all the previous books I’ve read, the destination was very clear, and while the authors often managed to write the journey in a way that kept me feeling engaged until the end, there was not a lot of mystery about where the story was headed. The Raven Scholar is the polar opposite. I don’t think I could point to a single 100-page stretch in this book where the story ended up resolving in the way I thought it would.
When it works, it really works. I found myself very immersed in the universe and laughed out loud at a few jokes that were set up through the world-building over time. While I was reading this book, I consistently found myself thinking back to the video I’d watched about it, and found myself agreeing with a lot of the creator’s points. For this reason, for a long time, I was thinking about going so far as to give the book six out of five stars. I was thinking about creating a whole new category to show off just how amazing this book is compared to the others I’ve read so far. In the end, though, I have to settle on a “measly” five stars. The reason for this is that after letting the story settle for a week, I simply don’t have as strong a recollection of particular high-impact events or as strong a bond as I felt to specific characters, for example, in Blood Over Bright Haven.
This is where I believe the book’s strengths become a bit of a weakness, at least to me. Because so many things happen at any given time, it is often harder to let the scenes simmer in your mind. There are a lot of characters, locations, and events being introduced or reframed at any given time. I think this is probably a benefit to an experienced reader. For context, I’ve seen some criticism for both Blood Over Bright Haven and The Institute over their comparatively slow and relatively obvious plot development, and I can definitely understand where those criticisms were coming from, but I didn’t feel too strongly about them. I think I may simply not yet have built up my attention span when reading books to the level that The Raven Scholar requires. Of course, this isn’t really the book’s fault, which is why I’m still giving it five stars. However, I’ll be reserving a six-star rating for when a book is so personally transformative to me that I’ll be thinking about it for months after finishing it.
I listened to this book as an audiobook. I think this probably exacerbated the problems I had with remembering all the characters, locations, and actions. The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Daphne Kouma. Compared to Blood Over Bright Haven, which was narrated by Moira Quirk, Kouma narrates non-spoken sections in a more varied cadence and at a slightly faster pace. This made it more difficult for me to follow the book at first, but I eventually mostly got used to it and learned to appreciate the variance in intonation, although I’m still not sure if I prefer the narration over Quirk’s. As opposed to my previous reviews, where I didn’t really have strong feelings about this matter, I would actually recommend you read this book as opposed to listening to the audio version! With how much is going on at any given time, I feel like the ability to circle back and do a quick double-take on previous writing would have helped me out a lot in digesting this story.
Final Review
As I said, I’m still giving the book five out of five stars. I will definitely be waiting for the second book in this trilogy with bated breath, as the ending did a fantastic job setting up future events and leaving the readers wanting more without relying on a cheap cliffhanger. The Raven Scholar is a phenomenal book one, and I would recommend anyone interested in fantasy give it a try without getting spoiled by any reviews.