Sarah's Reviews > An Enchantment of Ravens

The town of Whimsy sits right on the border between the human, humdrum World Beyond and the vast realms of Faerie. It’s been summer in Whimsy and the surrounding territories for as long as anyone can remember.

The town is populated by mortals with Craft—artists and artisans. The Fair Folk love refinery but can create nothing of their own, so they rely on these talented humans for clothing, entertainment, decoration, and delicacies. They compensate the artists with whatever enchantment the artist asks for (which usually backfire in spectacular fashion). The Good Folk are too luxurious to last long without their human Craftsmen, and the humans need the patronage of the Good Folk to protect them from monsters and other Good Folk. As with most codependent relationships, this has created resentment.

Our narrator is Isobel (not her real name—everyone here needs an alias for their own safety), a seventeen-year-old painter with an uncanny gift. The Fae are notoriously shallow, but Isobel can find the seed of deep emotion in their faces and bring it to the forefront in her portraits. With the many commissions the fairies give her, she is able to support herself, her upper-middle-aged aunt, and her two kid sisters. They are kid sisters in every sense of that word—March and May are about twelve years younger than Isobel, and they used to be goats. Some Fair One turned them into humans but didn’t want the bother of raising them, so Emma and Isobel took them in.

Ten years ago, Isobel’s parents were slain by one of the fell beasts from the wood around Whimsy. Another such beast breaks into the fields and accosts our heroine as she walks home from market, but the monster is driven off by a powerful fae—Rook, Prince of the Autumnlands, who happens to be the subject of Isobel’s next portrait.

As Rook sits in Isobel’s parlor, she develops a major crush on him, and starts to think he might reciprocate. But she knows that fairy/human affairs can lead only to ruin, and tries to put him out of her mind.

So she’s shocked when, after sending him off with his finished portrait, he reappears, paranoid and livid, and demands that she follow him into the wood, to stand trial for an offense he refuses to explain coherently. All he tells her is that something is wrong with the portrait and his fellow fae will be able to use it against him, but she suspects the truth is far worse…

Content Advisory
Violence: A few vague, scary battles between fairies and monsters occur, which will be detailed under “Nightmare Fuel.” (view spoiler)[Rook breaks off his own finger to rid himself of an iron ring which won’t come off otherwise.

(hide spoiler)]

Sex: Rook and Isobel kiss passionately in the woods. He has her up against a tree and she’s embracing him when she realizes what danger they’re in and tells him to back off. He does so at once. They kiss a few more times after that in a much more subdued manner.

The Spring Court apparently set a trap for the two by putting Isobel in a bedchamber that Rook was bound to wander into once he got drunk enough. He crashes on the bed with her, and she panics, sure that they’re being spied on. She convinces him to turn into a raven so she can hide him among the blankets. He stays in that shape for the rest of the night, fearful for his life and hers.

Our two leads accidentally-on-purpose glimpse each other’s toilette while travelling in the forest.
A bored fairy turns Isobel into a bunny rabbit. Rook is able to figure out what happened and restore her to her true form—her clothes are still where they fell when she was morphed and she scrambles out of his arms, mortified, to find them.

Language: Isobel frequently uses a scatological four-letter word when she’s frustrated. Her little sisters enjoy repeating this word.

Substance Abuse: I got nothing.

Nightmare Fuel: Where do I even begin?

Let’s start with the Alder King, the villain of the piece. He sends zombie-like minions after Rook and Isobel; on one occasion, rotted humanoid and plantlike fae arms claw out of the ground and our protagonists have to beat them away.



Later on the King himself appears. He’s humanoid but much larger than a human, swathed in dust, and deranged by the thousands of years that he’s lived.

One of the King’s servants is Hemlock, originally the huntsman (technically huntswoman or huntress) of the Winter Court. Hemlock looks more like a tree than a human and is always accompanied by vicious fae hounds (view spoiler)[who, it is implied, turn on her (hide spoiler)].

Hemlock doesn’t even bother trying to look human, but the other fae all maintain beautiful glamours, which only waver when they’re sick or injured. Underneath that, they’re nearly fleshless, bug-eyed, and stretched; think El Greco meets Tim Burton. Even with the glamours, each has a single, grotesque flaw: Gadfly’s fingers are twice as long as they should be, Lark has shark teeth, Aster is as gaunt as a famine victim, Rook’s flaw is a major spoiler.

The Fair Folk also put glamours on their food, which is liable to be rotten and crawling with maggots in reality.

Conclusions
An Enchantment of Ravens is a cool, brief breath of fresh autumn wind. Granted, the Good Folk are



—but Margaret Rogerson has largely avoided the overly trendy elements that will make other books in this genre very dated in the next few years.

One unfortunate YA trope that does appear is the dreaded insta-love. It could not be more obvious from the beginning that Rook and Isobel will become a couple, and they waste no time in falling. That said, their bickering is a lot of fun, they spend very little time kissing or whining, and both of them are willing to die to save each other and Isobel’s family. One nice touch was how Isobel tells Rook her real name, but never reveals it to the reader. It’s their secret. Aw…

As an individual character, particularly a female MC in a YA fantasy, Isobel has a lot going for her. She’s devoted to her Craft. She’s knowledgeable but still awkward, projecting a cynical persona to protect a huge imagination and childlike appreciation for the beauty of nature. So many of the girls in these books get completely mired in their own melodrama, but she never does. She can always distance herself from the nonsense at hand, laughing at it and at her own role in creating it. This is a mark of maturity that will serve her well (view spoiler)[as Queen of the Fair Folk (hide spoiler)].

Rook is one of those vain but deep antiheroes with glorious hair. He’s a familiar archetype, but one with enduring appeal, and Rogerson did a good job balancing his human and inhuman traits. He made me sigh, he made me laugh, and he made me root for him. (view spoiler)[Long live the Autumn King. (hide spoiler)].

These characters live in a vast world with ample room for more adventures. I enjoyed the season-based classifications of the fairy courts, and the forest was one of those magical places where you could just feel the limitless possibilities; anything could happen in there.

My only gripe is with the plot. So many things were left unexplained and hurried by in the rush to the next scene. How did the Alder King take over? What was the pain Isobel detected in his eyes? What’s Gadfly’s motivation? (view spoiler)[Is Isobel immortal now? How did that happen? With the Green Well gone, will she still wind up partially cursed like Aster? Is the Good Law sundered for real—and what are the ramifications of that? (hide spoiler)]

I don’t need every question answered. Bill Watterson deliberately refused to explain the “Noodle Incident” in Calvin & Hobbes because he figured that leaving it blank made it funnier—every reader could fill it in with the most over-the-top thing they could imagine. Likewise, while it would be interesting to know the origins of the Lady of the Green Kirtle from The Silver Chair or Supreme Leader Snoke from The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi —or why/how Elsa from Frozen obtained her powers—or why that Sugar Bowl was so important in A Series of Unfortunate Events—or literally any information at all about Jareth and his Labyrinth— but those things are not needed to understand the story, and too much time spent on them might destroy the tale’s momentum. Today, YA fantasies tend to err heavily on the side of over-explaining the lore. I appreciated that this one did not, but you could argue that it under-explains instead. Balance is nice.

Rogerson’s prose is agreeable—fairly descriptive and old-fashioned, bursting with imagery, snarky without being harsh.

Overall I really enjoyed this book. Recommended for fans of Robin McKinley and Sharon Shinn, Labyrinth enthusiasts, and shippers of Hawkeye/Margaret (M*A*S*H) or Kylo/Rey (Star Wars).