
Descent of Ravens
Bel's War, Book 1
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Narrated by:
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Isaac Grisham
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By:
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A.C. Andrews
An LGBTQ+ epic fantasy
The old covenant of the gods is broken. Will the world break, too?
When an army of vampires invades the island of Trosika, Rio and Turi must fight for their future. Rio is a healer and a priest of Astara who suffers severe self-doubt and a growing crisis of faith; even his goddess cannot stop the forces arrayed against them. Turi has long buried a secret about himself that he fears could upend everything.
When Rio unseals a centuries-old tomb, releasing the immortal and cursed prince Philip, he discovers that he has a bond with Philip that stretches across lifetimes. As Turi grapples with his secrets, he is recruited by the terrifying goddess Mormo and gifted with necromancy for reasons he does not understand.
Rio and Turi must contend with bloodthirsty mages, battle an endless army of vampires, and confront the truth of who Turi truly is; most of all, they must rely on their unshakable friendship to survive. As they struggle to protect each other, their religion, and their island home, the fate of an empire hangs in the balance.
Descent of Ravens is an exciting new fantasy with gay, trans, and nonbinary protagonists, rich world-building, and dark adventure!
Content Warnings: This is a work of fantasy with LGBTQ+ characters, violence (including epic battle scenes), adult language, and adult situations including mildly explicit scenes of sensuality and consensual sex suitable for older YA listeners and adult listeners. There are sadistic villains whose sadism involves cutting and blood and feral vampires who are, ahem, messy eaters.
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I can’t wait for the next book.
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Different for Me
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I enjoyed the story
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Epic!!!
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A fantastic beginning to a new series!
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Epic
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I Loved it, Great Start to New Series
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Fantastic!!
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Great listen!
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I’m really mad that I paid for this book. It was … not great.
Though the world building had potential, it was completely usurped by rotten pacing, extraneous detail, flat characters, inconsistent language, and general disorganization. I’ll also admit that the narrator was monotonous; a talented reader could have done this book so many favors, but even with the best voice actor in the world this would have been rough.
The entire book felt like a first draft. The plot points were there - again, interesting world building! - but there were so many elements that distracted from all the ways the novel could have succeeded:
- the romance felt trite and unbelievable. A long-undead prince and the reincarnation of his lover? Could have been super interesting, exploring insecurities and identity and building something deep based on who two people can be together … or, it can be glazed over and used as a cheap way to go zero to sixty romantically in under two chapters.
- a trans person as a main character, with societal pressures and acceptances. I just read several fantasy books in a row that included trans characters, a few of which had their own language to describe the trans identity - the main difference between the trans people in this book versus other fantasy novels was that this felt like it was being shoved into the story to win points versus being a rich part of the world building and culture. Characters were outing one another; the concept of being kinji was at once very significant and then glossed over in the next moment; and the family dynamics that orphaned the trans character were tied up in a happy little bow in one chapter of “woke grandma saves the day” without having any meaningful conversations about the bigotry that severely impacted the trans person’s childhood.
- literal deus ex machinas. Left right and center. Lazy writing.
- the language swapped from formal, fantasy language to awkwardly modern.
- the dialogue was almost always awkward and stilted.
All in all, the only reason I’m giving this book any stars at all is because the plot had the potential to be compelling. It was imaginative, and used the vampire trope in a cool way. Unfortunately, no one went over this with a good red pen before it got published.
Good world building - bad everything else
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