Book Review: Raven Flight

Raven Flight (Shadowfell #2)

By: Juliet Marillier

Published By: Knopf Books for Young Readers

Publication Date: July 9, 2013

Page Count: 416

Buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or IndieBound

Source: ARC Kindly Provided by Publisher via Edelweiss

Audience: Young Adult - Fantasy

It took me quite a while to read Raven Flight. It was a great read but never really grabbed me hard in terms of page turning. It was well written, and had a good tale to tell but I felt like it was a little too meandering to bring me back to it when life got busy; I didn’t feel like I had to make time for it.

 

Raven Flight starts out where Shadowfell left off; Neryn has made it to Shadowfell, the rebel stronghold, and now faces the huge task of honing her Caller skills so that when the time comes she will be able to call the Good Folk to assist the rebels in overthrowing the tyrant king Keldec. She has to visit four guardians (or super powerful Good Folk) to do it, which are inconveniently spread out to the four compass points. At the same time, Flint, the love of her life, has to head back into the lion’s den and resume his undercover position in Keldec’s court. This means he won’t be accompanying her on her travels, and someone else has to go.

I liked the journey that Neryn went on; I loved how she interacted sympathetically with the environment and the Good Folk. She developed a great deal of wisdom on her journey and it was really interesting to watch her feel out her gift. At times she had some very hard lessons to learn, but they all served a purpose. I would not have persevered like she did.

 

What did bug me about it was that the time frame for this quest was constrained by one chieftain’s demands that they hold the rebellion by a certain point in time. This seemed totally ridiculous. Surely if you are prepared to rebel, you do it when you are good and ready to make sure it works! I also struggled to remember Flint’s other identity so I was slow to catch on to the sections which followed him at court.

 

My final thought is that this built well, helped by the addition of some pretty shocking developments at the end of the book. I will probably go on to follow the series in the next instalment as I do enjoy reading about these characters, but I won’t rush to get to the next book. I think Raven Flight suffered slightly from middle book syndrome, where the plot develops steadily but without much real excitement; this ticked over for me but that is about it. I have hope that the next book will see slightly more drama and have a faster pace, with the impending rebellion drawing near.

Summary:

Neryn has finally found the rebel group at Shadowfell, and now her task is to seek out the elusive Guardians, vital to her training as a Caller. These four powerful beings have been increasingly at odds with human kind, and Neryn must prove her worth to them. She desperately needs their help to use her gift without compromising herself or the cause of overthrowing the evil King Keldec.

Neryn must journey with the tough and steadfast Tali, who looks on Neryn's love for the double agent Flint as a needless vulnerability. And perhaps it is. What Flint learns from the king will change the battlefield entirely—but in whose favor, no one knows.