Isobel is a prodigy portrait artist with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread, weave cloth, or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized among them. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes – a weakness that could cost him his life.
Furious and devastated, Rook spirits her away to the autumnlands to stand trial for her crime. Waylaid by the Wild Hunt’s ghostly hounds, the tainted influence of the Alder King, and hideous monsters risen from barrow mounds, Isobel and Rook depend on one another for survival. Their alliance blossoms into trust, then love, violating the fair folks’ ruthless Good Law. There’s only one way to save both their lives, Isobel must drink from the Green Well, whose water will transform her into a fair one—at the cost of her Craft, for immortality is as stagnant as it is timeless.
Isobel has a choice: she can sacrifice her art for a future, or arm herself with paint and canvas against the ancient power of the fairy courts. Because secretly, her Craft represents a threat the fair folk have never faced in all the millennia of their unchanging lives: for the first time, her portraits have the power to make them feel.
Goodreads
My Rating: 3.0 Stars
So this month, I’m turning over a new leaf! (Get it? Fall…leaves…at least pity laugh, please). I will be reading as many Halloween appropriate books as I can! I’m not generally a fan of grim or spooky books, but I’m determined to prove that old dogs can learn new tricks. I’ll also be posting #bookstagram pics for all of my reviews! Now I know this book isn’t particularly spooky, but I’m easing myself in. So, it has ravens on the cover: it counts.
Anyways…on to the review. I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS! I feel like I need an hour long conversation with the author of this book so that I can get some damn closure. An Enchantment of Ravens was just so unexpected. I went into it expecting something like ACOTAR (because that’s what the book is marketed as) and was instead given a book that was relatively slow paced, and not quite as world building as ACOTAR. The world building that did exist was fascinating, but left me wanting more.
Additionally, I felt like the entire novel was just a giant build up, and then a quick finale. The anticipation was so drawn out that I felt some of the suspense was lost. Even the romance was stretched a bit too thinly for me. The main characters spent the entire book in each other’s company, but I didn’t really feel anything for or between them until the last 25% of the book. I actually found myself getting frustrated because I felt like one character was too quick to form attachment, and the other took to damn long.
Above issues aside, I LOVED the different take on the Fae. I feel like so many books nowadays build the Fae up to be these beautiful, powerful, indestructible creatures. Rogerson’s Fae were different, it was the first time that I actually found myself pitying their species in a book. I’d love to elaborate more on this, but as you know, I’m a spoiler free kind of gal.
I also enjoyed Rogerson’s writing. She was wonderfully descriptive without being boring, and described nature without drowning the reader in metaphors. She also didn’t linger on scenes longer than necessary, or draw out days, two things that annoy me endlessly in some novels.
My Takeaway: An Enchantment of Ravens has without a doubt the most gorgeous cover I’ve seen thus far this year. However, I felt a bit let down by the book itself. Perhaps my expectations were simply too high, but when a book is compared to ACOTAR, its hard to keep them realistic. However, Rogerson’s style of writing flowed well, and her take on Fae was refreshing. It is a book worth reading, but not the favorite I expected it to be.
As The Book Ends 