Book Review: An Enchantment Of Ravens By Margaret Rogerson

Rating: ★★.5
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Goodreads Synopsis:

Isobel is an artistic prodigy with a dangerous set of clients: the sinister fair folk, immortal creatures who cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and Isobel’s paintings are highly prized. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—she makes a terrible mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes—a weakness that could cost him his life.

Furious, Rook spirits her away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously wrong in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending on each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, then love—and that love violates the fair folks’ ruthless laws. Now both of their lives are forfeit, unless Isobel can use her skill as an artist to fight the fairy courts. Because secretly, her Craft represents a threat the fair folk have never faced in all the millennia of their unchanging lives: for the first time, her portraits have the power to make them feel.

I really wanted to love this book! The cover art is perfection and it’s easily one of the most beautiful books on my shelves. But unfortunately the story felt unoriginal and had very little direction.

An Enchantment of Ravens tells the story of Isobel, a young prodigy portrait artist who is commissioned by the Faerie Prince of the Autumn Court, Rook, to paint his portrait. Having painted real human sorrow in his eyes the Prince is humiliated and ridiculed by his fellow Fair Ones for showing weakness. To save face, the Prince comes to whisk Isobel away to stand trial in the Autumn Court, but they get more than they bargained for as their feelings for each other start to grow, something that could end up getting them both killed.

This was alright. I am a huge fan of faerie stories and magic so it was definitely the right genre for me, but unfortunately the whole thing felt rushed and a little messy. I feel like this book told us how much time had passed, rather than showing us. Which made the whole plot really disjointed. I have never liked “instalove”, and due to the fact the plot felt rushed, so did the romance. I think because this is a 300 page stand alone book, the author pushed through all the plot points fairly quickly, which made nearly all the action scenes fall flat. It was as if a threat would come and go within a few pages, so even though we are told the characters are going through this terrible ordeal, it didn’t feel all that bad considering they got through it and move on from it so swiftly.

I think the book could have been great if it was given the right amount of time to really delve into the story and expand upon the world and the culture of the faeries! There were some really fantastic elements within the world that I would have loved to learn more about, but again, due to the book being such a short stand alone, these felt fairly glossed over. Nearly the whole plot is Isobel and Rook travelling too, which isn’t terrible when it’s done right, but it just felt as though we went from one part of the spooky forest to a slightly different part of the spooky forest over and over and over.

The romance felt extremely unbelievable. From the moment the characters meet, they have some sort of strange connection. Then Isobel is essentially stolen from her home by Rook and they fall in love in what feels like a matter of days. There was also very little to no other relationships built upon besides the central romance. I felt absolutely no connection to any of the other characters within the story which is a real shame considering sassy side characters are my usual jam.

Overall I feel like this could have been an amazing book if it was given more time to flesh out the story and it’s characters. It had incredible potential, but unfortunately it was underwhelming for me. I have read a lot of books about Fae that I absolutely adored, so I think if you don’t have anything else to compare this to, you may love it! But sadly, it didn’t quite hit the mark for me.

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