Week 30
So this blog post is….late.
However, due to the magic of the internet, I can make it look not-late!
I think.
This week: IN THE RAVENOUS DARK by A.M. Strickland
#46) IN THE RAVENOUS DARK by A.M. Strickland
This book was a WILD reading experience, let me tell you. And I’m not entirely sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
IN THE RAVENOUS DARK follows Rovan, a “bloodmage” in a city where bloodmages are forced into service and given undead “guardians” to keep watch over them. She’s lived secretly after her father was apparently killed for being a secret bloodmage, but after her inevitable discovery, she is thrown into a new world of magic and intrigue.
Let’s start with what I liked.
I liked the queer representation - nearly every character in this is some flavour of queer, which is really fun and always gratifying to see. Rovan, the main character, is (according to the description) pansexual, and the novel also allows for polyamory, which is fun. There’s even a character who is (implied, I guess) to be asexual (and maybe aromantic too? Unclear).
There’s some interesting theme stuff going on about family, too, both blood and found. I kind of wish some of this had been taken a little further than it was, but I still liked what was there. I also thought that the magic system and the set-up of the world was interesting.
Finally, I liked that the whole book kind of exploded at about the 3/4 mark. Like, I’m not sure entirely if I enjoyed the direction that it went fully, but I appreciate a book that has the gall to just go completely all out and upend every expectation or sense of reason. That part was just plain fun (no spoilers, of course).
On to the rest: I think where this book fell flat for me was that I didn’t really connect with the characters very well. Rovan in particular always seemed to make the worst possible decisions - it’s not very often I feel a protagonist is annoying, but she cleared that bar for me. Like, honey, if your family is being threatened, maybe don’t piss off the person threatening them? It felt frequently like nobody in this book acted like a real person. I didn’t like almost any of these people.
Which leads into my next point, which is that I also found the relationships underdeveloped. A lot of the stakes of this novel hinges on Rovan’s mother being in danger, and I think they maybe have one interaction before that? And I’m pretty sure the interaction is just “oh no you’ve been captured!” in front of their captors? It’s just not a lot to hang a story on, in my mind.
And that’s to say nothing of the romantic pairings, which jump from meetings to sex to I-love-yous in what feels like the blink of an eye. That may just be my own taste and personality coming into play, but damn, I did not believe these love stories for a single second.
I’m interested to see what this author might come up with next, but this book was a bit of a miss for me, all things considered.