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A review by sofia_bookishwanderess
An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson
3.0
*3,4 stars*
I went into An Enchantment of Ravens with weird expectations that were not met. I thought I was gonna love this book because I had heard that it was romance heavy, it had great characters and a amazing love story, which are things I usually love. I had also heard that it wasn’t particulary strong in terms of plot, world building and magic system, but I was sure I could love it even if that was true. All of these ideas were based on reviews I had read and all of these ideas were wrong.
So let me tell you about what I liked and what I didn’t like about this book:
WHAT I LIKED
The whole concept around the Crafts: In this world, humans can do Crafts while fairies can’t: they can’t cook or write or paint or sew or do anything that involves creating something. They will literally die if they create anything. I think this concept is one of the only unique things about this book and I found it incredibly fascinating. The book addresses in a very brief and superficial but interesting way the idea of what’s the purpose and meaning of life if you can’t create anything and if don’t leave anything behind when you die. I wish there was even more of that in the book.
The way painting and feeelings are entwined: I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll just say that in this world, fairies can’t have feelings, but as the story progresses, it becomes evident that that’s not exactly true and painting plays a big part of that discovery. It’s something that adds an intriguing and thought-provoking element to the story.
The writing: this book has a beautiful and poetic writing style that isn’t too flowery or distracting from the story.
The twists: The last 40% of this book got better for me just because it’s full of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming, so actually became engrossed in the story for the first time in the last 100 pages.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
The characters: I found almost every character in this book, but specially the main characters, two dimentional; their personalities were flat and they felt like characters I have seen before. Also, Isobel was so annoying sometimes and that was my main problem with the first half of the book, I just didn’t like her.
The romance: I could have gotten over the whole instalove thing (and there is instalove, I don’t care what anyone says) if I had believed in the connection between Isobel and Rook, but alas I did not. I didn’t understand why or when they fell in love, it made absolutely no sense to me and even after they were supposedly in love, I didn’t feel like they had any chemistry or real connection. I started to like them together a little bit in the last like 15%, but even then I wasn’t a big fan.
The pace: the first 15% of this book was engaging even if the pace was slow thanks to the beautiful writing. But once Isobel and Rook met this book got so slow, there were like 50 pages of them stumbling around the woods and since I didn’t care for the characters and found them annoying, it wasn’t fun to read. Then things got a bit more interesting but still the pace was slow and then all of the sudden everything started to happen at once. Basically, the pace was all over the place and it negatively affected my reading experience.
The ending: It was ok, it just felt too easy.
I went into An Enchantment of Ravens with weird expectations that were not met. I thought I was gonna love this book because I had heard that it was romance heavy, it had great characters and a amazing love story, which are things I usually love. I had also heard that it wasn’t particulary strong in terms of plot, world building and magic system, but I was sure I could love it even if that was true. All of these ideas were based on reviews I had read and all of these ideas were wrong.
So let me tell you about what I liked and what I didn’t like about this book:
WHAT I LIKED
The whole concept around the Crafts: In this world, humans can do Crafts while fairies can’t: they can’t cook or write or paint or sew or do anything that involves creating something. They will literally die if they create anything. I think this concept is one of the only unique things about this book and I found it incredibly fascinating. The book addresses in a very brief and superficial but interesting way the idea of what’s the purpose and meaning of life if you can’t create anything and if don’t leave anything behind when you die. I wish there was even more of that in the book.
The way painting and feeelings are entwined: I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll just say that in this world, fairies can’t have feelings, but as the story progresses, it becomes evident that that’s not exactly true and painting plays a big part of that discovery. It’s something that adds an intriguing and thought-provoking element to the story.
The writing: this book has a beautiful and poetic writing style that isn’t too flowery or distracting from the story.
The twists: The last 40% of this book got better for me just because it’s full of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming, so actually became engrossed in the story for the first time in the last 100 pages.
WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
The characters: I found almost every character in this book, but specially the main characters, two dimentional; their personalities were flat and they felt like characters I have seen before. Also, Isobel was so annoying sometimes and that was my main problem with the first half of the book, I just didn’t like her.
The romance: I could have gotten over the whole instalove thing (and there is instalove, I don’t care what anyone says) if I had believed in the connection between Isobel and Rook, but alas I did not. I didn’t understand why or when they fell in love, it made absolutely no sense to me and even after they were supposedly in love, I didn’t feel like they had any chemistry or real connection. I started to like them together a little bit in the last like 15%, but even then I wasn’t a big fan.
The pace: the first 15% of this book was engaging even if the pace was slow thanks to the beautiful writing. But once Isobel and Rook met this book got so slow, there were like 50 pages of them stumbling around the woods and since I didn’t care for the characters and found them annoying, it wasn’t fun to read. Then things got a bit more interesting but still the pace was slow and then all of the sudden everything started to happen at once. Basically, the pace was all over the place and it negatively affected my reading experience.
The ending: It was ok, it just felt too easy.