Started: 17/03/20
Finished: 21/04/20
Spoilers: No
Ahhh, now that was satisfying. I’m rather sad it’s all over.
Characters
I’ve loved these characters since the very beginning and their growth in this book was phenomenal. Galharrow is a completely different man who he was in books one and two. He grows with each book, and just when you think there’s no more room to develop left in him, Crowfall happens. He takes character grow to a total extreme. I’m in awe of this character and the extent he will go to for what he believes in. I might have read better character growth arcs in the past, but if I have I can’t think of any. It was so fantastically done, and I always knew he’s reasoning. Despite his secrets (even from the readers), I never once needed to think but why, Galharrow, instead trusting that he knew what he was doing and that all would become clear.
Seeing Amaira again as an adult was so wonderful. Her relationship with Galharrow is the air that I breathe. Every time he referred to her in his head as his daughter or his child I felt so many feels that even my feels had feels. (I’m not crying. You’re crying)
Valiya was loyal and wonderful and I love her. She deserves every happiness in the world. Dantry, still a fop, but a badass fop. And Maldon, my favourite immortal non-child creature ever. I love his banter and blasé attitude every time. All these characters are a strange little dysfunctional, unabidingly loyal family. Please adopt me?
Plot
This is one of those rare book series that I could literally never guess what would happen next. With each book, the stakes get higher, the threat bigger, the sacrifices greater. This series grew with each book.
Something I’ve liked about this series from the very beginning was the feeling of how small the characters are in this world. The villains they're up against are literally gods, and it takes gods to beat them. I’ve never once felt that the good guys and the bad guys are on equal footing (because they’re really not). Even during this book, after the things Galharrow does to himself to try to even the scales, for all his power and sacrifice, I still never felt like he was a match, which made the reading experience all the more enjoyable. Victory is never a guarantee.
Crowfall kicks it all up a notch, and that final stand-off at Adrogorsk is one of the finest battles I’ve read. It was engaging, exiting, and utterly unpredictable. There was no guessing how things were going to end. Despite things not going 100% to plan, I’m very satisfied with how things concluded and, in a way, it’s really the only way thing could have ended without feeling just a little bit cheap.
Setting
The Misery is always a fascinating setting, and it certainly took centre stage in Crowfall. My favourite kind of setting is one that feels more like a character. The Misery is very much a character setting. It’s temperamental, volatile, loyal to those that belong to it. It feels. It’s alive.
Ed McDonald does such a fantastic job bringing this place to life and painting it in the most vivid shade of gross. It was used to its utmost potential in Crowfall and we the readers couldn’t have asked for a better final battleground. It started with the Misery and it ends with the Misery. Expertly done.
The Misery is awful and bleak and disgusting, and god damn it, I want to go back.
Writing Style
So after raving so much about this book, it probably seems odd it hasn’t got five stars. It would, but for the fact that I found this the slowest of the three books (probably because it’s the longest of the three). Big fantasy books don’t scare me, but I did find that there were a few slow spots in this book that seemed to take me forever to get through.
The beginning was brilliant, the action fun and exciting. The ending likewise had me reading for hours until it was done cause I couldn’t put it down. But there was some indeterminate portion in the middle somewhere that started to lose my attention. Not enough to stop reading it of course, but just enough to slow down my reading and enthusiasm. I couldn’t even tell which parts were slow because, looking back on it, it all seemed pretty damn good. But for me, there was definitely a moment that the pacing didn’t drive me along quite as quickly as I would’ve liked. I only mention it because I raced through the first two books, swept up in the ease of the writing, and this one for some reason took me a month (which I didn’t expect after breezing through the first two books).
Despite this, it didn’t effect my enjoyment of the book and I will still shout Raven’s Mark trilogy at anyone who says they want to read grimdark.
Final Impression
A fantastic conclusion to the best grimdark series I’ve read. I can’t wait to see what else Ed McDonald writes in the future. He’s one for the auto-buy list.
Well, that’s that. I miss this world and these characters already. But hey, that’s what rereads are for.
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