I received a free digital copy of this from Booktasters and the author on twitter for an honest review. I’ll be honest, this review is months overdue. I started it, and I immediately loved it. I was gripped into this new world right from the start, but then life got in the way, and I didn’t get the chance to finish it for a long while, but I would regularly think on this book and how eager I was to get the chance to finish it. Now here we are.
It’s amazing to me that if it weren’t for Booktasters, I would have probably never heard of this book. It is wildly underrated, and it deserves so much more recognition, which is why I’m forcing time to finally make this review.
There are so many elements to this story: magic, wonderful world building, mysterious characters, action, love, and soo much more. First, I should give an idea of what it’s about. There’s a world with four vastly different lands. Fulmer is the land our main character calls home. Here, women are valued and given higher places of power. This is a startling contrast to Chem. There, men hold power, and women are sold and traded. Our primary main character, Kesta, is one who extremely values her freedom, but she is willing to tame her wildness and sacrifice so much to save her people and her home from the same enslavement.
The book’s blurb drew me in, but everything about this book kept me there. When I say the world building is chef’s kiss, I do mean it. I’m also extremely picky when it comes to romances, but the love we see in The Raven Tower is not one to be missed. One reason I don’t particularly like romance in fantasy is because authors can struggle with balancing it with the rest of the story, but Emma Miles seemed to effortlessly create the perfect balance between the romance and action and magic. Even more, she managed to wonderfully balance the different points of view without anything feeling lost from it. If anything, it further enhanced our understanding of the story and its characters. This book deserves sooo much more recognition, and I’d recommend you giving it the chance.
I’m excited to eventually read the sequel. I’m hoping it’ll be just as amazing. Now, I need to go write a few other reviews I’ve fallen behind on this year.
