Raven’s Shadow by Patricia Briggs, A Review
Sometimes a story is progressing in what seems like a predictable, but perfectly satisfactory way, when it suddenly lurches in a whole new direction. Depending on how the author handles this, the result may be a great improvement or may significantly degrade the story.
In Raven’s Shadow, Patricia Briggs sets up a hero and heroine, puts them in peril and hints at romance between the two off them. In other words it seems similar to several stories she’s told previously. Then all of a sudden it’s 20 years later.
The transition is a little startling as the expectations I’d built up rather fell apart, but Briggs quickly got the reader up to speed with the new situation and as the story builds, it becomes clear that the time lapse allows for a number of elements that wouldn’t quite have made sense otherwise.
Briggs is juggling a larger cast of central characters here than in previous books, but it works well and the jump between different viewpoint characters is actually much less disorienting because with this many characters you come to expect it.
The setting of Raven’s Shadow is traditionally medieval and many of the background elements could be called fantasy cliches: the nameless evil; the great war that destroyed a civilization; etc. But all of these elements are effectively used and Briggs system of magic with different Orders having different gifts is interestingly different.
Ultimately though, it is the characters which make the story work. The heroes are easily likable enough that you want to see them succeed and once the villains of the piece show their faces they have that smugness to them that makes you itch to see them get what’s coming.
While the ending of the book screams for a sequel (which the author has already published), the book does stand on it’s own. The plot is complete with the conclusion of this book, but a number of unresolved issues remain.
I really enjoyed this book. Briggs gave us another of her enjoyably competent heroines but this time surrounded her with not just one but a half dozen or so fully rounded and interesting characters.
For more about this author see Authors I Enjoy - Patricia Briggs.
Eoghann Irving is amongst other things the creator and Editor of Solar Flare. He has a life long interest in all forms of science fiction and fantasy and a pressing need to share this interest with anyone who will listen. Find out more at his personal website eoghann.com..
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