The Raven’s Tower is a slow burn of a story, building progressively deeper until you’re entranced by the many layers of history and plot, all converging on an epic reveal worthy of this nation of gods. Leckie is a master storyteller, painting an intricate portrait of a god and a young man who has caught the god’s eye. There are enough twists and turns, mysterious doors, and conspiracies to keep the thrills coming. You’ll revel in the history of this city, in the secrets held deep within its walls and, in the end, you’ll ask how nobody figured it all out.

I was most impressed with Leckie’s use of a second person narrative. It’s unusual to find in any type of literature, and it gave the narrative an omnipotent feel. We find out soon enough that we’re hearing a story told by a god who has spent centuries sitting on a hill, watching the world pass by. The story switches between the god’s experiences and those of Eolo, a young man who is aid to the Lease’s Heir in a large, prosperous city on a harbor. What seems to be a typical tale of family drama turns into something more as we learn more about this world of gods and promises. Wars were fought, gods were betrayed, and the stories make a brilliant base beneath the unfolding plot unfolding. It’s not until the final page that you realize just what this story is, and what the future holds.

The Raven’s Tower is the first Ann Leckie book I’ve read, and I was floored by her abilities as a writer. There were times when I questioned why we needed the details we were getting. As I continued reading, I slowly realized that every word was necessary to understand what was truly happening. There are short and long games at play and they fit into a perfect puzzle that was so fun to piece together. Enjoy the story of this mysterious god — it’s one that defines the word epic.

Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Thanks to the lovely people over at Orbit for an advanced reading copy of The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie in exchange for an honest review. Receiving this ARC did not influence my thoughts or opinions on the novel.

Synopsis

For centuries, the kingdom of Iraden has been protected by the god known as the Raven. He watches over his territory from atop a tower in the powerful port of Vastai. His will is enacted through the Raven’s Lease, a human ruler chosen by the god himself. His magic is sustained via the blood sacrifice that every Lease must offer. And under the Raven’s watch, the city flourishes.

But the power of the Raven is weakening. A usurper has claimed the throne. The kingdom borders are tested by invaders who long for the prosperity that Vastai boasts. And they have made their own alliances with other gods.

It is into this unrest that the warrior Eolo–aide to Mawat, the true Lease–arrives. And in seeking to help Mawat reclaim his city, Eolo discovers that the Raven’s Tower holds a secret. Its foundations conceal a dark history that has been waiting to reveal itself…and to set in motion a chain of events that could destroy Iraden forever.

Review

Well, first off, this title colored me intrigued because it was by Ann Leckie.
To hear that she was publishing her very first fantasy novel , and then upon seeing the gorgeous cover by Lauren Panepinto, I was all over it. Though I haven’t read her Imperial Radch series, I have heard amazing fantastical things about it. Not to mention she is also the winner of several awards including the Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke. So to say I had pretty high expectations going into it is an understatement.

The Raven Tower is a unique and dark tale, one that, for me, is missing just a few key ingredients to make it something magnificent.

Well, unfortunately, I was a little underwhelmed. I have been reading fantasy for a few years now (I know, humble brag) and feel like I have settled into a groove of what works and doesn’t work for me when it comes to good epic/grimdark/literary/etc fantasy novels. What absolutely doesn’t work for me is a lack of action, and boy does The Raven Tower lack action. The first half of the book is really just a build-up/re-telling of history up to this point in time and leads up to an ending that is decently satisfying. I mean, Leckie definitely does a fantastic job of leaving me wanting more by the end, but the trek to get there felt like climbing Everest, only to know you have to get back down.

The book is written with a little bit of 1st person POV, told by the ancient God called the Strength and Patience of the Hill (which is mostly backstory), but a majority of novel is 2nd person where said God sees through and talks to a secondary character by the name of Eolo, even though Eolo can’t always hear what the God is saying. Basically, the God is narrating Eolo’s present life, giving us a glimpse into his story. Still no clue why the God has chosen Eolo has it’s primary talking stick, but I digress.

The characters fell pretty flat on their faces for me. There isn’t one I can pick out of a lineup that I really felt for or continue to care about. It really just feels like a play where I am waiting for the 2nd act (and yes, the novel has a very Shakespearean feel with a spoonful of Hamlet helping the medicine go down). Even the Gods are pretty lackluster for playing with humanity like chess pieces, though to see man fight back with a little bit of gusto makes for an interesting last quarter.

Overall, I can only assume Leckie has tons left to reveal is this story, but man do I hope she gets to it quickly. If I’m going to get through Book 2, I need some hackin’ and slashin’, some bloodied swords and heads on spikes. Maybe a God or two to duke it out over their next puppet. SOMETHING.

I'm very undecided about how this book left me feeling. Very original story about an ancient stone god and the humans he takes care of. Told from the god's point of view, he relates his memories from first becoming aware of what he was and then how he comes to be in the middle of a war between other gods attached to their respective cities. The other main characters are Mawat, who is heir to the ruling seat of Vastai where most of the story takes place, and his faithful attendant and trusted friend, Eolo. I felt myself getting pretty restless while reading through some of the passages of the stone god philosophizing about life and reasoning on how he would use his power. It was difficult connecting with any of the characters honestly as everything was told in a very detached way, without much feeling or emotion shown, with the exception of anger and outrage over injustices. The ending was rather vague although perhaps on purpose to set up a sequel. However, it would be a sequel I'm extremely unlikely to read. This story just was not appealing to me.

Goodreads.com review

I rarely get excited about things these days, but I literally squealed with joy when I saw the Netgalley invitation to read The Raven Tower in my inbox. Ann Leckie writes books with characters and perspectives that are so very different from anything else out there. She often goes weird and it works. The Raven Tower alternates between first and second person (seriously!), the story told from the perspective of a god. The world Leckie creates is so interesting, I could have read thousands of pages of The Strength and Patience of the Hill describing its world. Unfortunately, some readers might not enjoy some aspects of this relatively slow paced narrative; occasional long conversations about how gods accomplish tasks tend to feel slow. But more patient readers will appreciate the payoff of rich world building hidden in these long passages.

I stumbled upon Ann Leckie when I was feeling so tired of the predictability of many adventure hero fantasy books. Leckie writes books that move away from the well beaten path and they are a joy to read.

I received a complimentary ARC via NetGalley. Thank you thank you thank you to the author and publisher!

I just couldn't get into this book, it is well written I just found I didn't really care what happened, kimd of boring to me.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance read

I have to be honest. At first, this book was hard for me to get started reading. It had more to do with the point of view in which it was written. It was not your everyday point of view. However, once I got more into the meat of the book, I was able to finish it with no problem. It was written with observations from the past and the present. The Raven in "The Raven Tower" is the god of the Iradeni people. This book deals a lot with the gods and their influence on the peoples of the surrounding lands. Gods plot against each other. They join forces and the people are caught up in the mix. As for the people, Eolo, a loyal servant of Mawat, is the biggest pawn. Mawat is the heir to the Raven's Lease, the ruler of Iraden. Mawat's father is the current Lease and has suddenly gone missing. Mawat is the rightful replacement but his uncle uses this opportunity to step in and become the Lease. This of course leaves Mawat furious that he has been relegated to the Lease's Heir again. He also knows full well that his father would never just walk away from the bench as he has been told.

The surrounding countries are starting to sense the political unrest in Iraden. The Tell, a hostile neighbor, has begun raiding parties. And where is their god in all of this, the Raven has remained silent. Eolo investigates for his Lord Mawat and discovers secret plots. The answers to the questions Mawat has been asking his uncle will not bring peace to Iraden. We also learn the history of the gods of ancient times. They have other plans for the people of Iraden.

I like the way the story unfolds. It's a good beginning, and sets the tone for a great read. Characters, plot, settings...this book hit the mark over and over. Easy hand sell.

Wonderful world building and writing. Well developed and strong character growth and descriptions. The cover is very enticing and the description teases you to figure out what the book is actually about.

I read this book in roughly a week and highly enjoyed it. Fans of Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss will enjoy this book.

I am VERKLEMPT. I was a pretty easy sell for this book since I love Ann Leckie and her doing fantasy was intriguing immediately. And I am not surprised I love it. But man, MAN it was good. I can only talk about it so much without spoiling and so much of what I like is the twists and turns and the ways it's entirely unexpected and yet somehow the only way things could have gone all at once. It's in second person, sort of, which takes some getting used to, but works with the weird not quite dreamy tone of the book. It's got a trans main character whose story is about a lot more than his gender and cool, interesting mythology. Like Hamlet meets Wicked and the Divine, but really not either of those things.

Leckie's foray into fantasy delivers on mythology and worldbuilding, told through a distinctly non-human lens.

Ah, ravens. They're smart, they're beaky, they come in murders, and many in our world are better Londoners than I am. They're also the subject of more than their share of both folklore and, through that, fantasy interest. Whether they're harbingers of death, guides to the spirit world, speakers of prophecy and truth or otherworldly tricksters, there's a lot of mileage in these feathery next-level dinosaurs. Now, in Ann Leckie's first novel-length foray into fantasy, a raven god is front and centre, alongside a cast whose human members often play second fiddle to their divine counterparts.

Many readers will be familiar with Leckie for her science fiction work: the superlatively brilliant Ancillary Justice, its sequels, and the same-universe standalone Provenance. On the surface, The Raven Tower is a very different book. We find ourselves in Vastai, a low-tech, small-scale polity, whose citizens fear and worship the forest, envy the better harbour of their neighbour (in one timeline, at least) and have come to rely on the blessings of a specific god to keep their town flourishing. Gone are the spaceships and corpse soldiers, but the presence of the gods themselves - who are very much real in this world, and regularly appear to humans - means that the Raven Tower feels just as connected with non-human intelligences as Leckie's previous works, and just as accomplished at giving those intelligences believable motivations and voices.

(The rest of the review has spoilers for one very early reveal. If you want to go into the Raven Tower without prejudice, stop reading here - or come back once you're 5% of the way in and know what I'm talking about.)

The Raven Tower leans into its myth-heavy, story-driven setting, not least by setting up a second person narrative: a mysterious voice who addresses the ostensible protagonist, Eolo, as if telling his own story to him. In the opening scenes, this narrator is present but not directly involved in the action, and the voice's narration of these scene-setting events - in which Eolo's companion Mawat, the heir to the Raven Tower, returns to witness the death of his father - feels oddly full of conjecture and uncertainty, as it reflects both Eolo's uncertainty and the voice's own unfamiliarity with him. This uncertainty is a jarring place to start a story, but it's worth the effort as we establish the parameters of the world of Vastai: a land ruled not by a monarch but by a "lease", a hereditary ruler given powers and privileges by their Raven god, but compelled to sacrifice themselves when the Raven's "instrument" (their animal body) dies. Mawat, who has been brought up expecting to ascend on his father's intentionally premature death, arrives back to instead learn that his father appears to have fled the tower and his uncle has taken on the Lease's position instead. This should be impossible, based on how the Raven has always operated, and Mawat's reaction to the discovery sets in motion a chain of events that threaten the very foundations on which the Tower and its inhabitants stand.

It very quickly becomes clear, however, that this is not just Eolo's story, but that of our narrator - and that our narrator is not, as it initially seems, a human servant in the Raven Lease's employ, but a god in their own right. Most often referred to as The Strength and Patience of the Hill (though, for the sake of simplicity and help anyone still skimming while hoping to not get too spoiled, I'll keep referring to them as "the narrator"), the character addressing us is revealed to be immeasurably old, potentially very powerful, and has sat unmoved through geological ages of change and comparatively recently found themselves interacting with humans. Existing fans of Leckie's work will find it easy to believe in her ability to turn this narrator - a large rock who hates almost all change on principle - into the novel's most compelling character. From here on out, the second-person adventures of Eolo and the humans of Vastai are interspersed with the narrator's history and their interpretations of the events of the present. In Leckie's world, gods gain power from human worship and offerings, and are able to change reality using this power - but they must be careful not to deplete their own strength in doing so. The risk a god of any size faces is how to ensure they can sufficiently impress and meet the demands of their worshippers - and, perhaps, see off challenges from rival gods in the process - while not giving up too much of themselves in the process, or making promises that force them into doing so in future.

What the narrator's identity does mean is that the characterisation and interactions of the human characters in the "present" sections are deliberately viewed through a lens of distance and opaqueness. It takes some considerable time to gain an understanding on Eolo beyond what the narrator guesses about him at the start of the tale, plus a few external observations which make it clear that he is a trans male character; many of the other human characters are given only hints of characterisation through understated or indirect means. While this is entirely in keeping with the position of the narrator and their understanding of humans (and selective interest in what makes them interesting), it did make the start of the novel slower and more challenging to get into than I expected. Leckie is so good at portraying human modes of affection and care (even when they're being filtered through non-human characters like Breq) that it's hard not to miss that here, but the comparative lack of focus on relationships and connection in the novel's early stages means that the connections that do develop on the page - not least that between the narrator and The Myriad, a fellow god who enjoys manifesting as a cloud of mosquitoes - are that much more precious and interesting.

As you'd expect from an author with Leckie's skills, the plotting, especially the weaving together of the past and present narratives, is spectacular. Central to this are the twin mysteries of the book's past and present: what's going on with that whole Raven Lease thing, and, somehow more interestingly, how did a rock whose sole previous experience with movement was "hover off the ground by a foot for a few minutes" apparently travel hundreds of miles to become linked with the Raven Tower? Again, likely because of the nature of the narrator, it was the human plotline that took longer to warm up for me, but once it does it's pretty great, setting up a culture whose elites are intricately tied to gods whose reality and power has never been questioned. Of particular note is the delegation from Xulah, a trio of foreigners who take an early interest in Eolo but clearly have their own agenda at play, involving their own snake god and Vastai's larger neighbour Ard Vustika. However - and given the banal content of some of these scenes, I can't quite believe this is true - it was the scenes from the narrator's past that I found myself waiting for, time and time again. This means, just to be entirely clear, that I was comparatively speeding through sections on political intrigue and protest in order to get back to the narrator's time waiting out a mini ice age or establishing god-specific language for B vitamins. The characterisation is just that good.

Ann Leckie's last couple of books have been on the comfort reading side for me, and on a personal level, I did miss that from Raven Tower. However, that should in no way be taken as a criticism of what this book does deliver. The elements that make the Raven Tower dense and alien and unsettling are what makes it so good, and if you approach it with the right time and headspace, this is an immensely rewarding read. I'll be eagerly watching the skies for her next book, and giving any giant rotating stones and smart-looking ravens in my future the respect they clearly require.

I could not get deeply into this one even though I know many will thoroughly enjoy it. The style of writing was just not for me. It is different, somewhat awkward but just not my cup of tea.

A surprising read! The story is told from the perspective of an ancient god. The story goes back and forth between the god’s past and the present day story of a town in crisis. Very interesting character development of the god and the story really draws the reader in. Highly recommended!!

The story concept itself had the potential to be epic and engaging but the POV choice made the actual reading journey somewhere between a bore and a nightmare.