The Ravenmaster’s Revenge Book Review – Spoiler Free
My Review
Novel provided by the Author in exchange for an honest review.
My Rating: 3/5
Reading this book reminded me why we readers have to pick up more self-published books. Is it the best book I have ever read? No, but The Ravenmaster’s Revenge is a great read that I think most fantasy readers will enjoy.
When asked if I was interested in reading this book I took a quick look on Goodreads and was sold immediately when I saw it was an Arthurian-inspired story. We follow Arthur, Merlin and all the Knights and it’s fantastic. Jacob Sannox pulls these men through time and we watch as their long lives unfold.
Sannox does a fantastic job of pulling from historical events and bringing them into the present. We see Guy Fawkes, Charles I and more. I won’t get into any details as this review is spoiler-free, so instead, I will focus on what I am allowed to talk about.
I am not a big reader of urban fantasy. Some may have seen my struggle through the first few books in Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files, but I quickly came to love that series. I didn’t have the same struggle with The Ravenmaster’s Revenge. Instead, I was quickly drawn into the story and found myself enjoying the ride.
The main storyline is set in 2019 but we get a lot of historical chapters too and to be honest, if the book was set 100% in the past, I wouldn’t have been mad. The historical chapters were my favourite parts but that isn’t to say the “present-day” storyline wasn’t enjoyable.
I will briefly touch upon some negatives, but they are easy to overlook as the story is great and it’s a quick read that I really enjoyed. The first of these is the characters. There are a lot of knights, I get it, and while Sannox does in parts give them unique voices I found their dialogue merging together a lot. They didn’t always have individual personalities.
The final point I want to make is about the villain. There is an element of complexity to the antagonist of the novel which I enjoyed, but I found myself wondering why he was doing what he was doing. Yes, we are told, but I didn’t feel it.
I will certainly continue with the next books in this series and see how it goes because the story was good! You should definitely give it a shot if you need a quick read as a break between the massive fantasy books like Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen!
