Antonia Hodgson's The Raven Scholar

It’s like reading a (raven) scholar’s diary and also a masterpiece mystery in book form. We find ourselves in a deadly competition to be made king, drawn into political intrigue and backstabbing, while also trying to figure out a dark mystery that spans decades. It’s a clever and complicated plot that twists in and out of itself as the dragon would love to see. It also has a lovely sense of wry humor I enjoyed balancing everything out.

If you like long books with lovely descriptions, nuance, hits all your scents, slowly walking you through the days activities, finding scarps of hints and clues, this book is for you. If you want something more straightforward, surface level, romantasy, this book will be in your DNF. Not because of the books fault, it, like When the Moon Hatched, is written in a style that’s for the readers who want to deep dive into the story and world. The world itself is historical in feeling but is a world build of its own place and time, so not.

Who tells the story pivots wildly within changing paragraphs so you have to pay attention to who is telling their part of the story, although as the story progresses and fragments are observing, it’s the same yet different… i appreciated greatly that the author changed the font around when the Guardians speak, but still, you have been warned of a shifting POV.

All in all, this big, beautiful, heavy book was worth lugging around and reading the last few weeks!