• Author: Kalyn Josephson
• Series: The Storm Crow #1
• Genre: Fantasy
• No. of pages: 368
• Dates read: 25.03.19 – 31.03.19
• Rating: 3.75 stars

I did not expect to live this book as much as I did!

I received this book as an ARC in the Fairyloot December 2018 box and was quite hesitant about it. It didn’t sound like something I would normally pick up.

This book is FULL of representation! First of all, you have this really vast world with each kingdom representing parts of the world we live in this subsequently came with many POC characters. Our protagonist is a woman of colour and she is amazing. She is a really enjoyable character to view the story from. So many characters in this book are POC which is refreshing to read about. 

There are characters who are LGBT and what I liked about this book is that their sexuality wasn’t their defining feature, they are not solely placed in the story to be the gay character. We know these characters initially for their bravery or their kindness or their arrogance and it just so happens that they are gay. They are not this walking stereotype which is brill.

This book is full of powerful women and women in positions of power which is amazing to read about. Most notably the Queen of Illucia, while I hated her for her cruelty I also loved to see a cut-throat character that wasn’t a man but a woman. She was truly terrifying. Kiva was a smart, funny and incredibly powerful woman who was so fun to read about. It was just cool to see these countries run by women.

This book deals with depression and while I wouldn’t consider it the best representation, there are probably better books out there, I thought it was written well without bias and it was good to see the exploration of trauma and depression and the vicious cycle that you go through dealing with it.

The friendship between Kiva and Anthia was amazing! Those girls had each other’s backs through thick and thin and it was great to see these two women stand up and support each other through all the horror they are put through.

Ericen as a character was one that I thought I wouldn’t like. I don’t like characters we are meant to hate initially but then learn to like them later on and forgive them for shitty or selfish decisions but I felt that this was developed well in this story and the author never tried to make us want to forgive him either, he had to own up to his own bad decisions.

A couple of things I wasn’t a massive fan of was…

Caylus was a nice character but to me, he felt quite bland with a lack of personality. I found myself questioning why Anthia liked him as much as she did. Even though he is given a sad backstory I still didn’t find him that interesting.

The writing itself is pretty basic. I enjoyed her setting descriptions and when describing Anthia’s depression but when it came to normal conversations or actions I found the writing to be average. It’s definitely writing anyone could get into but I wanted to see magic within the words.

Finally, it took a while for me to get into the story. It was quite slow-going initially, but it did eventually pick up.

The next book I will be reviewing is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie! I am a massive Agatha Christie fan. I reviewed her book, Murder on the Links, last year and LOVED IT!