The Raven Scholar is an epic fantasy - and I mean epic, the book is listed as 700 pages long - and the first of a new fantasy trilogy. The novel has been incredibly well regarded by other authors I follow on social media and is now a Hugo Nominee for Best Novel, so it's been incredibly intriguing to me for a while despite my struggles to get back into reading. The story features a world with eight animal gods - Fox, Raven, Ox, Monkey, Dragon, Hound, Bear, and Tiger - whose existence is questioned but whose return is feared to bring absolute destruction. And then it follows largely a scholar of common birth who is drawn into the Kingdom's competition for succession and a murder mystery and is forced to unravel the mysteries and conspiracies around her before the competition gets herself killed.
The result is a story that uses some interesting and unusual tricks of narration and viewpoint changing to slowly unravel its secrets in a way that feels both really fresh and really engaging, such that I had a hard time putting this really big novel down. This is the first of a trilogy, so the book is in no way stand alone, but it does resolve the arc it starts in a way that doesn't feel like you were cheated out of getting a full story here. And the characters it introduces, particularly protagonist Neema and a few others, are excellent and fascinating to read about. There are some negatives - if you're looking for a potential court intrigue setup or for the conspiracy reveals to make a ton of logical sense, you're probably in the wrong place here - but overall I really enjoyed The Raven Scholar and am excited to try to read the sequel next year.
Plot Summary:
Sixteen Years ago, the Great Traitor, Andren Valit, had attempted to seize the Emperor's throne, only to be killed in the throne room fighting with the Emperor. Eight years later, Andren's family - 16 year old twins Yanara and Ruko - and their mother are summoned by the Emperor...and in the audience, Yana is found guilty of hiding her father's treason. And when the Emperor invites Ruko to pronounce Yana's sentence, the boy inflicts the most deadly sentence of all upon her: exile unto a certain death. And it falls upon Raven Scholar Neema Kraa, a mostly friendly commoner known mostly for her calligraphy and her interest in old tales no one else cares about, to write the Orders carrying out the sentence, even though doing so would put her at odds with the only one she cares about, her best friend and lover, Cain.
Eight Years Later, Neema has somehow become appointed the High Scholar to the Emperor, who oddly shares her interest in the old folk tales of the land. As High Scholar, it has fallen to her to help organize the Festival Trials...a competition between the 7 great champions of Orrun - one for each god other than the Dragon - to see who will become the next Emperor. It's a task that is only bitter for Neema, because soon the Emperor who favors her will depart and among the champions to replace her are Cain (now the Fox Champion), Gaida (her former Raven classmate who has for some reason always tried to make her life miserable), and worst of all Ruko Valit, now the Tiger champion and the favorite to win it all despite his betrayal of his sister 8 years prior.
Yet when Gaida is found dead on the eve of the festival and Neema becomes a prime suspect in her murder, Neema soon finds herself tasked with not only solving the murder and clearing her name, but also with taking Gaida's place as the Raven champion, despite her lack of martial skill and practice. And Neema's investigation will soon unravel a conspiracy that lies at the heart of Orrun...assuming the Festival challenges don't get her killed first.
The Raven Scholar is a story whose telling is told in a very interesting and different fashion from most books. While, after the first few chapters focusing upon Yana, the story is centered around Neema, the narrative does not stay stapled to her own point of view. Rather, every so often the narrative will slip unannounced to the point of view of a character around her...and even more frequently the narrative will take place from the eyes of the Raven (often in first person plural) as the Raven observes Neema and occasionally has its eyes wander all around the story. In this way, the narrative reveals bits and pieces to the reader about character motivations and secrets before Neema learns them herself and yet it does so in a way that feels natural and not actually spoiling, as the reader will be just as puzzled by them as the Raven. And this shifting of narrative also serves to really illustrate the bizarreness of the eight animal gods, especially the central one for Neema - the Raven. It really works super well to keep you absorbed and interested in the narrative while providing color for the world in a way that a more straightforward narrative would not.
What that narrative is of course is a combination of fairly common modern fantasy frameworks. On one hand, you have a central tournament with the main protagonist facing off against a number of "champions" of their people. On another you have a murder mystery which the main character has to solve. And third you have a conspiracy thriller as the main character discovers that not all of what she knows is as it seems and the former two frameworks hide some devastating truths. There's nothing super unique about these frameworks, and arguably the last one, the conspiracy plot thread, is the weakest by far since it involves a conspiracy that if you think too hard about it seems almost impossible to have truly kept secret. And yet even that plotline works to some extent because of how the narrative is told and the excellent characters and aspects of the setting that populate this world.
Those characters begin with Neema, a commoner scholar who starts the story essentially friendless if not for Cain...and whose immediate action in the first few chapters drives Cain away as well. Neema is well meaning and simply trying to figure out a way forward with the hand she was dealt - where her commoner origins maker her career prospects weak and her interests in obscure folk history further make her not exactly someone who works on things people have much interest about. But this is a world that has tried repeatedly to spit her out and it's in that context that she has made the choices she has (such as writing the order of exile) and her natural inquisitiveness and want for something better makes her super easy to root for and care about. I should point out that one of her alleged character atributes, Neema's supposed issues making friends, seems more informed than real - throughout this story no one seems to have any issue making friends or dealing with her, even if she's occasionally a little blunt and not a charmer. Yet somehow she works really well despite all that and how she handles new situations, such as the developments in the three plot frameworks or the reveals that the Raven may be more real than a myth, are all really done well. After Neema we have the other contenders, who are all at least decently sketched out and feel like real characters whose quirks and differences make them at least somewhat interesting as they are around and may support/oppose Neema. And there are a few other interesting side characters who are more related to the conspiracy, some of whom (like Yana's mother) have really interesting backstories that show them taking extremely dangerous actions to protect themselves and those they call their own. These characters are aided by the setting, whose animal based gods are all very real and interesting in their quirks, even as we really only get to see bits of some of them (mostly the Raven).
The setting unfortunately is limited to the capital Island (although the next book seems likely to remedy that) and as such, we really don't get to see enough of the Empire to really understand and know how things are working in this world and why some of this stuff really matters. So there's themes seemingly being played with her about power and noble blood vs common blood, but we just don't really know enough about this world for much of it to land. Similarly, the mystery antagonist is at least at this point just kind of evil without much characterization besides that and it's shocking when they're revealed but also they don't really have much depth for us to understand them here. But again, this is a first book in a trilogy and hopefully this will be expanded upon next.
Overall though, The Raven Scholar is an excellent start to a new epic fantasy trilogy and its praise is pretty well deserved, and I really look forward to seeing how it continues in 2027.
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