Reviews with content warning for Gore - The Faithless Hawk

I believe I have found a new favorite author. Owen’s writing style is amazing, her word choice is fantastic, and her characters are diverse.

In this sequel to The Merciful Crow, we again follow Fie as tensions between the crows and the other castes continue to mount. When Fie’s band of crows comes across a whole town affected by plague, she bands up with two other chiefs to deal mercy. The queen has falsely blamed the kings death on the crows / Fie, so Tavin has to find her before the queen does. Once reunited, the band, along with our favorite lordlings, have to find a way to keep the queen from claiming the throne for herself.

Features betrayal, romance, spying, political plots, hidden identities, a wonderful world of magic, and so much more.

I absolutely adored this duo loft and I look forward to reading more work from Margaret Owen.

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corvicore's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

hell yeah. wish we'd seen a little more of

Jas' and Kohda's relationship though,

however i understand that that would be difficult given that the book is from Fie's perspective. Same thing with Viimo. This book also suffers the same problem as the last one, being the author's commitment to overusing a few words in the character's narration, this book having "aught" and "naught" as its victims. I feel like it would be more bearable if the prose was written with more flourish and lyrical aspects, but Margaret Owen's writing style is firmly modern, so these old fashioned words feel all the more stark against the rest of the book. Still, it's a lot better than the first book and all the god damned "betwixt's" there lol.
Although I do like Rhusana and her development in this book, I wish she were a bit more threatening. We are told right at the beginning what her weaknesses are, and the protagonists never fail to exploit them, so beating her feels like less of a challenge than it should be. I think the only time I was genuinely threatened by her was when

she sicced her tiger on the noblewoman at the party

, but even then I don't think that brute force is the best way to show how scary a villain is. That's just me though, I tend to lean more towards the more cunning and "scares-you-by-how-smart-they-are" kind of baddies haha. I do like the Disney-villain end she got though.
I'm also a little perplexed by the

Khoda vs. Tavin rivalry that was set up at the beginning and then never followed up on. Honestly when I read that Tavin was looking at Khoda weird I thought that he was checking him out, not being jealous. It feels like a little bit of a missed opportunity to not use this to further explore Tavin's bisexuality and also foreshadow his betrayal.

Although, while writing this review I realize that that could possibly bring up some negative stereotypes about bisexual people being cheaters... I don't know. It just feels weird.
Complaints aside, I really really love this book. It followed up on some of the worldbuilding that confused me last book, such as Birthrights and inter-caste marriages. Also cats. Owen heard our plea for more cats and delivered in the best way possible. And the reincarnation thing is so cool :D

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yvonne_cl's review

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adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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marit_1305's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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