Flight of the Raven (The Ravenwood Saga, #2)

by Morgan L. Busse

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This book picks up exactly where the last one left of, which is nice.

I enjoyed the first act a great deal more than the first book. It’s sort of more YA in tone but mostly the interpersonal relationships take the stage in a way they didn’t in the last book. And not just Selene and Damien, all the characters and the interplay been them makes the story more interesting.

That being said, especially in the second act, it is so not YA which is disappointing. Maybe it’s not supposed to be and my hopes/expectations are off base. But the conversations that do happen are all practical and not at all emotional. They’re talking about these huge things that should inspire passion snd angst. Where’s the angst? Like her power stretching beyond her control and her being the head of the house and everything that means and him telling secrets and it’s all ‘I understand. This must be hard for you. I’ll leave you to your thoughts’ boring. YA isn’t about age, it’s about tone. If this were really a YA book those conversations would be passionate and conflicted and visceral. They’d be a lot more fun.

And oy vey with the descriptions! Some description of the world is good, but literally telling me that a character pressed down the lever on the door handle, not once but like half a dozen times, is so unnecessary.

Then going into the third act it sinks back into the style of the first book, so much general description and thinking and questioning and hardly any talking or feeling or doing. Especially with Selene and all the things she’s noticing and questioning and doing absolutely nothing about. It’s frustrating and kind of boring! Like what’s the point other than filling a page count because nothing is actually happening in the story. Selene also hardly interacts with Damien at all and we spend way to much time with her alone in her head asking the exact same questions she’s been asking the entire book. When Amara starts doing something it creates tension in a bad way because it’s like Selene, you’re being dumb and it’s going to make you vulnerable and I can see so clearly what you need to do so just do something already!

It’s also frustrating because the reader knows what Selene can do, even if she doesn’t. She doesn’t try. She doesn’t hope or wonder or even make an attempt that fails. She just shuts herself off and there’s so much grief and so much wasted potential it sucks everything enjoyable out of the story.

But then it ends well. Not nearly as well as the first book which was finally exciting and emotional, but well enough. I’d say Busse is relying on expected emotions rather evoking then herself, but she doesn’t write particularly emotional books so that’s not entirely true. Still, it’s a god ending given what we’ve got and I expects leads into the third book quite well.