OK, so marketing works sometimes.
This week, I read The Ravens of London, a book I had never heard of before, but whose author posted this to Threads.
And I was grabbed immediately!
I really enjoyed this book. I have been reading a lot of cosy stories and capital-R Romances lately, so reading something that is a step outside of that bubble was a fantastic shock to the system. I worried about the characters in ways that you just don’t when there is a safety net of a promised Happily Ever After. And, to be fair, they needed a lot of worrying over. This is not a happy book. A lot of people have a terrible time, and then they die. Some people have a terrible time, die, and then have an even worse time!
The story is set in a post-World War One London, where magic and gods are an unspoken part of the politics and underworld of the city. The story focuses on Calum, a god who has just returned from being exiled to the gap between dimensions, and who wants to make everyone who sent him there pay. And he is more than happy to burn the world down along the way. That was really gratifying, to be honest. I probably won’t be changing my reading habits to the darker side of Romance or Fantasy because of this book (I am a baby, OK, I need my Happily Ever Afters!) but it was great to read something where the hero wanted revenge and wasn’t going to bemoan his decisions. He had a goal, he knew what he was doing, and he went for it. And I’m so glad he isn’t a real person with the ability to do that stuff in real life!
You get a lot of points of view in this story, which I love. I always want to know what is going on in people’s heads and getting to see the story through their eyes adds a lot of depth to the world. This is one of those fantasy, or fantasy adjacent, stories where you know the author has a lot more of the world planned out than they are showing. This does mean things got a touch chaotic at times and I think a little bit more needed to be done to differentiate the voices of all those characters, but even when I was confused, I was having a great time!
The setting and description are really strong in this story, at least in the physical places you go to. I could picture the surroundings of the characters with beautiful precision. The main problem is that it suffers from “Vaguely Historical Fantasyland” even in the bits where it is supposed to be in the real world. It’s got a very Pre-Raphaelite Medieval tone, even though Calum is supposed to have been locked up in a shadow dimension for 1500 years, which would actually take him back to the 400s, so if anything, his memories should be more Roman or even Iron Age than Arthurian. And “modern” London doesn’t feel right either. It felt more Dickensian than 1900s. Or, to be honest, I could see it as after WW2, with the ruins left behind after the Blitz.
I don’t know if I am getting this across right. I just think it would have been nice if the characters could have felt a bit more like they were from the distinct time frames they were supposed to be from, rather than a vaguely old-fashioned past. But that is me doing my usual nonsense and picking out something that no one else is going to notice or care about, and then writing several hundred words on it. I should not go looking for historical accuracy in fantasy novels, I should know that by now!
But overall, I really enjoyed this book. Especially the bits where it tore my heart out and stomped on it. Highly recommend if you want to have a good time reading about people having a terrible time.
Links below to the Amazon.co.uk page and the author’s Threads!
Stay safe out there,
K
Link to Ryen Santana’s Threads
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