Reviews with content warning for Murder - The Raven Tower

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The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie

12 reviews

adelita18's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Each year, my husband and I each pick a book we've read and enjoyed and swap with each other. I love this arrangement because we both have very different tastes in books and it helps us both grow outside our literary comfort zones and sparks some wonderful discussions. "The Raven Tower" was a book my husband gave me to read for 2024. I was shocked at how much I loved this book and thoroughly enjoyed Ann Leckie's narrative style and writing. This book is profound.

I love the two main characters - Eolo and Strength and Patience of the Hills. Both are extremely introspective, thoughtful, reflective, non-reactionary characters. They observe. They wait. They act prudently. They are the calm in the storms around them.
The narrative style was a bit hard for me to grasp at first and buy into but once the plot really began to move and Ms. Leckie began to flesh out the world she created, I found that I loved the narration by Strength and Patience.
Additionally, I loved the motifs and themes throughout the book - the power of words - especially the spoken word, the value of reflection versus reaction, the value of patience, the nature of being and being who you are.

"The Raven Tower" is exceedingly rich in detail and the layered language, I feel like this is a book I can return to often and still glean new information and insights. The audiobook narration by Adjoa Andoh was spectacular!

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hanz's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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kryg's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

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bookishlucy's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

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secondhandbookshelves's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

A very slow burn. Things didn't really get moving until 80% of the way through - and at first flipping between the narrator and "you" was very disconcerting.
Once I got the hang of how it was written.... I still struggled. The entire book is backstory & build up to book two.
There are many gods in this land, typically they focus on a specific thing (weapons, food, weather, etc) but others are more broad (the Forest protects the town from sickness)
This story follows Strength & Patience of the Hill, who is a rock god & her story over time.

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mpbookreviews's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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lanid's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

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sequelmage's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

The narration of this book is so interesting. It’s told entirely from the perspective of a god as they either relay stories that they’ve heard or events that they have directly observed. Additionally, they are explaining these events to one of the characters in the book.

Very unique and quite interesting. A very enjoyable read

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quirkykayleetam's review

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challenging mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.5

This is an extremely cool book for an extremely niche audience. Do you love Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet? Do you love creative forms of storytelling? Do you love fantasy books that involve epic world building? If you said yes to ALL those questions, then you will love this book. If not, stay away. Why? Because The Raven Tower is a retelling of Hamlet set in a fantasy world and told through both first and second person point of view SIMULTANEOUSLY in which "you" are a transgender version of Horatio being watched over by a god who is also a rock. I loved it! It got me out of a three week reading slump and falls into the category of books written by people whose favorite Shakespearean character is obviously also Horatio, but it is not for everyone.

This is a slow-build of a book as the storyteller reveals the world building and their place in it gradually until everything slots into place at the very last second. It envisions Ophelia as an incredibly implacable badass who both Hamlet and Horatio are at least a little bit in love with and in awe of while turning Rosencrantz and Guildenstern into interchangeable cronies devoid of any and all of the humor from the original play. Unlike The King of Infinite Space, the novel does not reword or rework any of Hamlet's original soliloquies or speeches, instead commenting on the scope of the play and how personal the action is to its characters. While it may not have added anything profoundly new to conversations about Hamlet (which it is hard to do these days), I nevertheless found it engaging and engrossing. Both the novel's last line and its meditation on the connection between living and caring will stick with me for a very long time.

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laurareads87's review

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

Having previously read and loved Leckie's science fiction, I was happy to pick up her fantasy novel The Raven Tower and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Raven Tower contains so much of what I've really loved in Leckie's other work -- skillful and innovative multi-POV storytelling, compelling worldbuilding that feels unlike anything I've ever read before, and power politics on a grand scale. The religious/political intrigue really worked for me. I feel like Leckie's done something quite interesting here with time scale -- with the story spanning a few different time periods, I feel like Leckie's really effectively incorporated the divergences in experiences of time between the human character and the god characters (who vary in lifespan but who are far far more long-lived than humans). I will note that much of this book is told in second person, which isn't my favourite (and I know some readers really don't enjoy) but in this book, for me, it worked: it is a choice that has a clear reason behind it in the context of the book itself which makes complete sense to me. Definitely recommend.

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