duchess 's review for:

The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen

3.0

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Teetering between 2.5 and 3 stars for this one, but I'm feeling magnanimous today so I'll round up to 3 stars. The plot was pretty derivative and I couldn't help but think it was really weird that all of the castes were named after birds for some reason?? I mean I suppose it was linked to the type of magic found in each group but the same characteristics can be found in other animals - no reason was given as to why this particular world was so hung up on birds. There were gods mentioned but they didn't seem to be birds so???

That said, the story can be boiled down to an unnecessarily long moral of "eat the rich," which I'll support in any guise.