- The Good: Epic fantasy with animal gods, political intrigue, and murder mystery
- The Bad: Plot holes and confusing motivations; too long
- The Literary: POV from one of the pieces of the raven god
In the empire of Orrun, Bersun the Brusque must step down as emperor after twenty-four years. Seven young contenders compete to replace him with feats of cunning and strength, including one-on-one fight scenes. When one of the contenders is found murdered, Bersun instructs Neema Kraa, the High Scholar, to investigate.
The Raven Scholar is a very long high fantasy novel that reads fast, with fun characters, fast-paced action, delightful dialogue, and lots of twists and turns. There’s plenty of torture, murder, and a dash of psychedelics to keep the stakes high. There are a number of plots to follow, some better done than others, so let me summarize my favorites.
In the prologue, a girl is sent into exile by her own brother, and the psychological reach of that decision impacts and motivates several characters in the present. Of course her brother, but also the protagonist Neema, who signed the girls’ exile paperwork and eight years later works as the High Scholar for the emperor.
There are also incarnate gods, and each contender belongs to one of the eight god families. Neema is Raven, her love interest is Fox, the brother-of-the-exiled-girl is Bear, etc. There’s also a Dragon god, which is cool but he never shows up. The gods can choose to talk to humans by way of pieces of themselves that manifest as regular animals the human world, which can also magically live inside people, or they can leave their realm entirely and walk the human realm with some effort. The Raven also has a POV, and it’s delightful.
So far we’ve got a contest to win the throne, a murder mystery plot, and some gods who may want to save the world from ending or end it themselves. Honestly, I’m not actually clear what they want. There’s also a plot of an impending war to the nation in question, but that’s generally off-screen and will likely play in future installments. That’s a lot of plots, and while they are generally fun, many of the decisions and motivations just make no sense, and it’s difficult to get past that. For example, Neema was chosen to sign the exile paperwork because she’s a teenage calligrapher, and then she’s held accountable for that action by multiple people a decade later.
Though all the main characters are adults, they read as teenagers, which gives the entire story a YA feel. Neema is #notlikeothergirls; she likes books and trivia and shuns popularity and parties, but she is sensitive about having grown up poor. Her love interest is self-obsessed and quite smug about it. Together they harbor more bad memories than good.
There are many more twists to be had if you’re up for an entertaining yet superficial fantasy. Recommended for fans of YA, though this is billed as general.