The Raven Tower

It’s hard to launch a new world in a book series. It’s even less common to launch a book that isn’t the start of a series or trilogy.But, that’s exactly what Ann Leckie was able to do in her new book, The Raven Tower. She created a compelling world that feels new and fresh while also breezing through a story with a distinct beginning, middle and end.In short, The Raven Tower was delightful.Leckie’s first book series was the Imperial Radch trilogy. Following a ship who existed in multiple bodies at the same time, it had a very unique narrative structure. It took a bit to get her style, but after you figured out things like the narrator couldn’t tell gender, so she called everyone “she,” the world clicked into place and the story gripped you.In The Raven Tower, Leckie plays around with some narrative conventions, telling her story in what I guess could be called second person omniscient. After you get used to that, though, the book breezed along. It’s a pretty simple story told well, with a few mysteries and a momentum to the narrative that never lags.The main thrust of the story is so interesting and leads to so many other questions, I find myself wanting to stay in the world longer. In this world that follows the course of Earth, “gods” are real and can interact with humans.Prayers and offerings give these other beings power and what they “speak” happens. But there are limits to that power. There are also wars between these “gods,” as they fight over influence, territory and, ultimately, power.In the book, we follow the course of time, from before life emerged from the oceans on this world so similar to our own, through the age of the dinosaurs, an ice age and humans following mammoths.The characters are all well-drawn with believable motivations, even if there’s not a lot of time with any of them. They have flaws, but are rarely two-dimensional. Everyone has enough motivation to move the plot along and the ending is satisfying without leaving any loose plot threads.The book is 432 pages, but reads much faster than that, flying through a split story of past and current events.In all, Leckie once again created a non-traditional world with vivid characters, color and history that you’ll want to spend more time in.

Like her multiple award-winning space opera Ancillary Justice (2013), Anne Leckie’s epic fantasy novel The Raven Tower (2019) does neat things with narrative voice and time. Both books begin disorientingly, because the narrators are not human beings and only gradually reveal their natures, and because Leckie alternates between two seemingly unrelated story strands far apart in time and place from each other and only gradually reveals their connection. Part of the pleasure of reading both books, then, derives from not knowing just who (or what) is speaking to us and not knowing just what is happening. In both books the pleasure of mystery fades when the identity of the narrator has been revealed and the two time strands of the plot have merged. Luckily, Leckie writes compelling main characters, convincing sf and fantasy narrative worlds, and clear prose.The narrator of The Raven Tower is The Strength and Patience of the Hill, a god who inhabits a stone and is one of the Ancient Ones, one of the first and strongest gods that came to the world. Strength and Patience alternates between two narratives, a first person one depicting the long history of its consciousness and life as a god in a stone in the north and its long friendship with the Myriad, another Ancient One manifested in mosquitoes, and a second person one happening in the present of the novel in which Strength and Patience addresses itself to “you,” like this: “Could you hear me, Eolo? Can you hear me now? I’m talking to you.”Eolo is a soldier of the nation called Iraden and right-hand man to Mawat, the heir to the Raven’s Lease. The Raven’s Lease is the ruler of Iraden who must dedicate his life to Iraden’s protective god the Raven (not an Ancient One, but a younger god) so that when the Raven’s Instrument (a raven through whom the god speaks) dies, the Lease will sacrifice himself to the Raven. In return, the Lease rules the land, in consultation with the Directions (men who represent different regions of Iraden) and the Mother of the Silent, the senior priestess of the God of the Silent Forest who supposedly protects Iraden.As the novel begins, Mawat and Eolo ride into Vastia, the capitol of Iraden, because the Instrument and hence the Lease of Iraden is soon to die, so Mawat expects to take over as Lease. Instead, they find that his uncle Lord Hibal has suspiciously become Lease, because, he claims, Mawat’s father absconded from the Raven’s Tower (the center of the god’s power in Vastia and the residence of the Lease). The rest of this part of the novel concerns Eolo’s efforts to find out what happened to Mawat’s father while managing the hot-headed Mawat. The situation is complicated by the presence in Vastia of representatives from an expansionist culture and by the increasingly organized and threatening raids of a barbaric culture in the south.Meanwhile, Strength and Patience is filling us (“you,” because it’s telling the story to Eolo) in on its millennia of existence, from when it found itself at the bottom of a sea and when the sea receded and left it on a hillside, to when it began to be worshipped by human beings and when it met the Myriad (or vice versa), and so on.Apart from its narrative tactics, the novel may sound like a typical epic fantasy (complete with usurping uncle), but Leckie does interesting things that set it apart from the herd. First, her book is a compact stand-alone novel and not first in a door-stopper trilogy or longer series. Second, she doesn’t just write gods as super-humans but as Other beings, as with, for instance, the way they gain power from sacrifices and offerings and the care they take with language and boons and curses because anything they say Will Happen but often with unforeseen consequences that may wind up, say, killing their worshippers or they themselves. Third, she does more cool things with gender than most fantasy novelists do (I can’t say what they are without spoiling a neat surprise, but can say that after a certain point gendered pronouns become problematic).It’s not a perfect novel. Although Eolo and Strength and Patience are great protagonists, supporting figures are not as interesting. For instance, there is a pair of one-dimensional twin villains who do too much smirking skullduggery (though they have their reasons for being reprehensible, as twins in Vastia are cursed and ostracized). Also, the book almost tired me in its first third, when it seemed that Strength and Patience was going to take forever to catch up to the present. And readers who require exciting battles scenes will be disappointed, because Leckie generally avoids them or depicts their aftermaths. There are a couple scenes showcasing Eolo’s man-to-man fighting prowess, but many more showing his diplomatic skills and keen insight into political machinations and motivations etc.Finally, I recommend Leckie’s book because it is thought-provoking and moving (but unsentimental) and uses gods to highlight human brevity and mortality, the power of language, and the wonder of working together to create something better for our posterity.

I read and loved the author’s earlier work Ancillary Justice and series which follows it. This book, like that one, is fantastic. However, while some themes and through lines can be seen in both, this one has a very different feeling. In some ways it feels like a Gene Wolfe book. There are things which are hidden and things that are in plain sight but which you won’t see till later. When you finish this book, you may want to immediately go back and read the whole thing a second time.The story is told by Strength and Patience of the Hill, a god who takes the form of a large standing stone. The form of the god is aligned with the style and Strength and Patience of the Hill has a deliberate but steady style to their narration. The story has two veins, one rapidly unfolding that involves some present day palace intrigue type action while the other story is much longer unfolding and involves the history of Strength and Patience of the Hill and tells the story of a war among gods, the long history leading up to the war, and the events playing out after the war.

Ann Leckie's writing is some of the best I've read in thirty years. Her versatility is on display with her most recent book "The Raven Tower". It's a departure from her previous science fiction into fantasy.I enjoyed the departure and look forward to whatever path her writing takes next!David Brown

De los libros más originales de fantasía que he leído. La trama es atípica, una combinación de American Gods de Gaiman con el toque intimista, meláncolico, reflexivo de Rothfuss.

Mind-blowing, as always, fascinating characterization and world-building. The resolution was a little abrupt, which I found jarring, but still a ripping yarn.

Wow! This was just stunning - and so different. A slowly meandering, carefully building, myths-heavy who-dunnit, full of political intrigue, manoeuvring gods, and legends of old, this wondrous tale tackles themes of thought, existence and the stuff that makes us who we are. If you are looking for swash-buckling fantasy action or something very similar to the author’s Imperial Radch trilogy, this is probably not for you - but if you’re prepared to just lean back, sink into the beautifully crafted writing and trust Ann Leckie to bring it home, you are in for an absolute treat.

Nice to read, but not great either