The Raven Ring

Lyra #5

by Patricia C. Wrede

The world of Lyra is the world of two moons which humans share with the folk of magic: the silvery people of the ancient Shee, the elusive forest-dwelling Wyrd, and the dread Shadow Born, whose evil seeps into men's hearts and the shadows of the world.In this Lyra adventure, a proud young mountain woman must leave her stronghold to travel to the city and accomplish a bitter task. Her mother, a soldier, died suddenly in the line of duty there, leaving behind the beautiful Raven Ring -- an ancient family heirloom that is much, much more than it seems.

Retrieving her mother's ring is a simple matter -- but getting it home again will prove no easy task. For there are dark forces at work in Lyra....

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Fiction, Magic, Adventure, Romance, Ebooks

348 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published December 1, 1994

About the author

Patricia Collins Wrede was born in Chicago, Illinois and is the eldest of five children. She started writing in seventh grade. She attended Carleton College in Minnesota, where she majored in Biology and managed to avoid taking any English courses at all. She began work on her first novel, Shadow Magic, just after graduating from college in 1974. She finished it five years later and started her second book at once, having become permanently hooked on writing by this time.

Patricia received her M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota in 1977.
She worked for several years as a financial analyst and accountant, first with the Minnesota Hospital Association, then with B. Dalton Booksellers, and finally at the Dayton Hudson Corporation headquarters.

Patricia finished her first novel in late 1978. In January, 1980, Pamela Dean, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Steven Brust, Nate Bucklin, and Patricia Wrede -- all, at that point, hopeful but unpublished -- formed the writer's group that later became known as "The Scribblies." Several years later, they were joined by Kara Dalkey. In April of 1980, Patricia's first novel sold to Ace Books. It came out at last in 1982, which is the year she met Lillian Stewart Carl (who introduced her to Lois McMaster Bujold by mail).

In 1985, shortly before the publication of her fifth book, she left the world of the gainfully employed to try winging it on her own.

Her interests include sewing, embroidery, desultory attempts at gardening, chocolate, not mowing the lawn, High Tea, and, of course, reading.
She is a vegetarian, and currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her cat Karma. She has no children.

Reviews

[Tracy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable. Definitely the best of the Lyra novels.

[Kylara Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently re-read this book to see if it would hold up past the test of time. Luckily, it is one of the few of my all time favorite books that does!

So while I was reading this book, I realize I have a type. (Actually I have two types and all of my favorite books fall into one of these types.) That's why I liked Poison so much I think. it fit into this type.

I will now attempt to describe why this is one of my all-time favorite books.

I love books with a strong female lead- one who is super-competent, practical, not annoying, and not a whiner. Maybe she has some vulnerabilities. But she is smart and figures things out.

I love books where the main characters figure things out at the same pace as the reader, or at least not too far behind. I hate it when they don't figure out something super obvious because plot. It's much more satisfying when the obstacles main characters have to face are more than their own stupidity.

I love books where all or most of the male characters respect the competence of the female lead. They know she is competent and trust her to get stuff done. And they're not surprised by her competence. They just take it as a given.

In addition to the main plot line, there is a BACKGROUND romance. Usually the main characters have an instant connection and at least like each other as friends. You can tell the main guy likes the main girl because he is pleased by something competent/awesome she's done. There are little, tiny moments of tenderness or adorableness throughout the book. Then at the end you know they end up together, because there is this tiny maybe one page, maybe one paragraph part about them getting together. Maybe you get a kiss, maybe a conversation. It's enough for you to know they end up together. It's enough to drive you crazy and wish the author had written so much more. It's enough for your imagination to run wild and picture what happens next.

(The other type I have is very similar only the two main characters hate each other at first, then by the end they fall in love.)

Those are pretty much all the main points. This book has them in spades.

The Raven Ring is a short novel and it's very straight forward. There's not a lot of character development. The world-building is very minor, because it's set in Wrede's world of Lyra and there are like 5 or 6 books in the series, so the world-building is kind of divided between them.

It's not stunning, subtle, or ground-breaking, but I love it!

[Gail Carriger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in Lyra (a world in which Wrede has written many books) this one stands entirely alone. It features a tough mountain lass, who just happens to be a bad ass fighter, and is basically a murder mystery with magic. Eleret must figure out who murdered her mother and what that has to to with the magical Raven Ring that is her only inheritance. It also features two marvelous love interests and a fun ending.

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Patricia Wrede's Dealing with Dragons series is a must-read for every eleven-year-old on this planet (if you did not read it when you were eleven, please go acquire it. it holds up), and Sorcery & Cecelia: or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot is one of my all-time favorite epistolary novels. I've found her other books somewhat lacking, which is disappointing.

This one started out strong, with an ass-kicking heroine and a satisfying amount of fantasy mumbo-jumbo, but it didn't resolve into an interesting enough story. I loved Eleret, our fearless protagonist, who is great in a fight and is a fish out of water when she has to travel to the capital city (which is one of my all-time favorite tropes!!). Eleret turns out to be sort of a snob, hence why I love her ("She'd have preferred to spend the evening in her room, sharpening her knives and setting her thoughts in order"), and I liked the tension between her Cilhar roots and the other peoples she encounters.

I like it when writers fully commit to a weird fantasy world, but here I'm not sure if Wrede gave her various concepts and peoples enough to do. Everyone is always gasping about the {insert fantasy word here} or surprised at the {insert type of magician here} or confused that {this level of magician} would {do this spell given the unexplained arcane rules}, and it starts to feel like filler before the end of the book. It's not interesting to think about the differences between the Cilhar and everyone else when you don't have a baseline for what the Cilhar are all about. The point where the plot turned into a snoozefest for me was when the card charting - basically fancy tarot card reading - is described in detail for about 50 pages, and ends up being the main fulcrum of the story.

It's funny to read some of the authorial quirks that also exist in the Wrede series that I love. Her characters frequently explain short concepts to each other, and one of them will cut in and "finish" the sentence. Her ability to come up with fun twists on fantasy worlds pops up in this book, too, but not as often as I would have liked. I really liked the concept of the Fourth Profession: "As I was saying, we're thieves, spies, forgers - and heroes".

So, ultimately, this was okay, but I'm not inspired to read the other Lyra novels. I would like to reiterate, though, that the first third of this novel, prior to the card charting, really did bring me joy. This really tickled me:

A young man posed in the far door, head thrown back, eyes half-closed, one arm extended along the frame of the door above his head. A bright blue cloak hung from the arm in graceful folds, displaying a gold-covered lining that looked as if it might be silk. His sword hung carelessly at his left side, and jewels glittered on the pommel and on the guard.

#mood

[Khanh, first of her name, mother of bunnies · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Raven Ring is the 5th book in Patricia Wrede's Lyra series. I did not read the entire series, the first book didn't keep me engrossed, but the summary of this one seemed interesting enough for me to give it a shot. First off, I did not find myself at a severe disadvantage for not having read the other books. The world is similar enough to many others in a fantasy world context, and the various magic system and races weren't so strange and extraordinary to warrant previous knowledge to ward off confusion. Even though I plunged in at book 5, I wasn't confused at all.

The story is about Eleret, a woman in her early 20s who stays at home in her mountain village and takes care of her siblings and father while her mother works as a warrior/guardian in a foreign land. Her mother dies suddenly, and Eleret sets off to claim her belongings, among which is a raven ring, whom everyone seems to want. Many attempts were taken at stealing her mother's belongings from Eleret; she, a young nobleman, and a thief try to dodge the murderous attempts while uncovering the mystery of the ring.

This was just an average book. There was nothing extraordinary about the writing, the world-building, or the characters. For me, the characters make or break a book, and I didn't find myself with any strong emotions towards any of the main characters. Eleret is not a fantastic heroine. She is strong and great at everything, but there is no character. We don't see her grow, mature, or show much weakness at all. She is already a strong character at the start of the book, she is certainly capable at everything she does, and maybe that's the problem. She is too capable. She can fight, she unwittingly uses the power of the ring, she can get herself out of just about every bad situation. I hate to say it, but there's nothing relateable about a character who is so capable.

The love interests (there is no sex here, not much romance, just slight tinges of flirting) are just ok. I found the young nobleman to be somewhat of a trope. He's privileged but capable, doesn't take things too seriously, and I didn't really see any depth to him; he is also quite patronizing, which is excused somewhat by the culture in which he was raised. I didn't like the thief, either. Both men weren't attractive to me at all, and I would have preferred it if Eleret didn't make a decision in the end.

The plot was dull, predictable, just one attempts after another at taking the ring. I expected more of an adventure, and instead, I got more of a half-hearted mystery.

This was a very disappointing read, I enjoyed Patricia Wrede's works in the past, and was hoping for more than I got from this book. Based on this one, I would not go back and read the previous installments in the series. It was good enough, I've certainly read worse fantasies, but nothing in the book captured my imagination.

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Excerpted from an old blog post about The Raven Ring and The Harp of Imach Thyssel, an earlier Wrede novel. The Harp part of the post is here.

I’d be interested to know roughly what percentage of fantasy written in the last fifty years has, as the cornerstone of its plot, Somebody Goes on a Journey. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it; fantasy tends to trace a direct lineage to mythology and folklore (also to Tolkein, but that’s another story), which are full of transformative journeys and enlightening journeys and feat-accomplishing journeys. But there also comes a point when I don’t want to see another scene in which the characters make camp, or the narrator complains about sleeping on tree roots, or blisters, or saddlesores, or what have you.

By contrast, The Raven Ring staunchly refuses to Go on a Journey. There’s one that happens at the beginning of the book, but the narrative jumps tidily over it, introducing the heroine before she sets out and then fast-forwarding to her arrival, which is where the story really begins. The capable Eleret spends most of the book wanting to leave for home, and sometimes it seems like she really will, but the story is about what happens to her in the city. As she is finally forced to realize, her problems are ones that need to be dealt in the city.

In the city, Eleret is a stranger in a strange land, which helps the reader to take a fresh look at a European Renaissance sort of city, while at the same time the things that seem odd and unfamiliar to her tell us a great deal about her and the culture she comes from. Her people pride themselves on their martial skills, so a great many of her comparisons involve weapons or fighting tactics or tales of great battles. It makes her frame of reference seem a little one-sided, but since we’re given the impression that the mountain region she comes from has seen more than its share of invasions in recent history, it works well enough.

Despite the foreignness of the city, Eleret acquires an impressive array of fairly powerful allies. Not powerful in an otherworldly sense — there’s very little of that here — but powerful on a civic level. The commander of the Imperial Guards is firmly in her corner, as is the headmaster of a magic school. She also picks up a young nobleman who contributes his swordsmanship and social privilege, and a thief who belongs to a powerful underworld family, which also has its uses.

I’m of two minds about this bunch of very useful people. As a pragmatist, they make me very happy — and Eleret is a very pragmatic person. She first goes to see Commander Weziral and Adept Climeral because Weziral is the person she’s here to see and Climeral is her designated welcoming committee. She returns to them because she has puzzles to solve and each of these men is clearly in a position to help her. Each of these men has a purpose within the story, and the reader is never left thinking “But if you’d gone to him in the first place, you wouldn’t be in this mess!” I like Eleret.

The problem here is that Eleret’s allies easily overpower her enemies. As in Harp, the title object is coveted by an odd assortment of unscrupulous people — here it’s a ring that Eleret has recently inherited from her mother. But while there are references to nobles, the antagonists we meet are common folk without a great deal of any kind of power. With her allies’ might and magic backing up her own skills, Eleret seems to find the whole ordeal more of an annoyance than anything else, and it’s hard to blame her. If it weren’t for a little dark magic introduced fairly late in the game, the bad guys would hardly seem like any kind of challenge for Eleret and company. Although she does get into more than a few fights, Eleret spends most of the book struggling against a lack of information more than anything else.

Although plot complexity does its share to make this a better book than Harp, its big strengths are in the character department. Eleret has a depth that Emerick never really achieves. Her strength is always evident and we see her softer side through her grief over her mother’s death, which she works through gradually in a way that Emerick doesn’t have the opportunity to show when a friend dies in the middle of Harp. By that point in Harp, there’s too much plot happening to stop for introspection, while Ring is able to take five in a couple of spots to deal with Eleret’s emotions.

And if the villains are underpowered, they make up for it by exhibiting some personality. My favorites are the nobleman who accuses Eleret in the street of having snatched his bag (when in fact it is her bag, and doesn’t he splutter delightfully when it turns out she can stand up for herself?) and the sneaky Jonystra, who uses every trick she can think of to get close to Eleret and won’t take no for an answer. I’m not sure what it says about me that I relish the pleasure of slamming doors in Jonystra’s face, but there it is. Plus, without her we wouldn’t get the tarot scene, which (A) pretty much comes out of nowhere, and (B) actually moves the plot forward in a big way. Not bad for a day’s work.

It happens near the middle of Ring, after Eleret has taken refuge with her friend the noble swordsman, whose family includes a trio of sisters and a crabby aunt who would not look out of place in a Jane Austen novel. Did I say before that this felt like a Renaissance-type city? Yes, there’s a bit of a tone shift here, but given that it’s a made-up city anyway, and Eleret is still feeling like a fish out of water, it works. Yes, Reader, you too can feel unsure of what the social niceties are. And for that matter, perhaps it’s not Austen we’ve wandered into, because Jane Eyre is what the tarot card scene reminds me of.

As you know John, midway through Jane Eyre a bunch of fashionable people come to visit Mr. Rochester, and one day they are entertained by a palm reader who sees the guests one at a time in a separate room. Likewise, on Eleret’s first evening here, a member of the family hires a tarot card reader (having one’s fortune read with tarot cards is all the rage, the young ladies tell us), who turns out to be someone we’ve already met. Both Jane and Eleret are prevailed upon by the other women to have their fortunes read, and of course in both cases, she is the person the fortune teller is interested in seeing in the first place. (And for those of you playing along at home, this is where the similarity ends.)

The downside of the tarot scene, to my mind, is that it’s Jonystra’s last scene — and just as I had worked up a good hate for her, she gets injured and begins to be treated by the narrative as a victim rather than a villain. But all the same, it’s a big turning point for the book as the real villain, and the real importance of the ring begin to be uncovered.

If you’re looking for a recommendation, here it is: The Raven Ring is a good read. Eleret is a strong, sensible female protagonist and I thoroughly enjoyed spending a few hundred pages with her.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Fun use of a "professional" thief, from a very "professional" family of the nefarious trades. Fortunately, 'thief' was on the 'good' side.

Lots of sorcery, knife and sword play along with the intervention of a shapeshifter who was a 'ringer,' pun intended. And said shapeshifter intended nothing but evil.

Light fantasy. Entertaining. Very little thought required on the part of the reader.

[Quartzen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wrede's Lyra novels are straightforwardly trope-y fantasy without the humorous bent of her Enchanted Forest Chronicles or the dubious alternate history choices of her more recent series (search online for Mammothfail for more on that), and this is possibly the best of the series; twisty flash-back-centric Caught in Crystal ranks with it and the first novel, Shadow Magic, is a sentimental favorite. The series is only loosely connected by the setting, with the five novels taking place in different times and places without more than passing reference to each other, and can be read in any order.

Eleret, a young Cilhar woman, makes a journey to a far-off city to retrieve her mercenary mother's effects after her mother is killed in battle, where she discovers that her mother's death may not have been from her wounds in battle but instead an attempt to steal a family heirloom, a silver ring set with a black stone carved with a raven. She acquires allies- a somewhat overbearing young nobleman mage named Daner who was in the right place at the right time and a delightfully snarky young thief named Karvonen who was in the wrong place at the wrong time- and tries to figure out who wants the ring and why so she doesn't bring trouble home to her family.

The mystery of what's up with the ring is pleasantly twisty and multifaceted and comes together nicely in the end, the love triangle is somewhat more predictable but well-executed with a minimum of angst (and awareness on Eleret's part at all for most of the book- it's easy to headcanon her somewhere in the realm of the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums), and unusually for fantasy novels that start with a parent's death Eleret's mother Tamm is given agency and a personality instead of fading away to a few vague memories of a childhood lullaby.

There are a few rough edges- unnecessary sexual harassment in a scene from a minor villain and the very 80s-90s fantasy thing of some people being surprised a young woman could be competent in a fight even though it's a setting where female guards and mercenaries aren't uncommon, though part of that is a deliberate choice to make Eleret outside Daner's experience of the noblewomen he knows. This reread, I really noticed that several minor characters seemed to push Eleret and the flirtatious Daner together as a couple as if to teach him a lesson about making assumptions about women and I was doubly glad that she ended up with Karvonen in the end- in this way, I guess, the book does go against typical love triangle conventions in that the heroine doesn't end up with the first guy she meets but the second instead.

I still hold out hope for more novels in this setting someday since there are many key historical events that take place between books that we never get to see on screen, but I think the fantasy genre may have moved too far on from this kind of tropey, lighter fantasy in favor of more realism and action and psychological depth.

[Ruby Hollyberry · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite of all the Wrede books I have (most if not all of them). It is amazingly multi-faceted for a fantasy novel - not a genre which is known for complexity of style! In addition to the fantasy elements, it is also a murder mystery, a comedy of manners, a classic girl-meets-boys-&-chooses-one romance, and it is one of the best examples I've ever come across of the ubiquitous sci fi/fantasy theme of "culture shock". That's a lot to pack into one little book! In addition, I really love warrior cultures and particularly warrior women, I love it when fantasy novels have well-explained divination systems and/or prophecies in them, and I also enjoy a convincingly described (but not a poorly done like most) dirty-taverns-and-alleys-medievalesque setting. So it fixes me right up. :)

[Mary Catelli · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale of a fantasy land. When a family of the hill folk Cihlar get word of the death of the mother of the family, the daughter Eleret sets out to retrieve her belongings. Wouldn't be right, otherwise.

She arrives to receive news that her mother's death had been surprising; she had been recovering from her wounds, which had not mortified, and then abruptly, she died. And there had already been attempts to steal her kit -- which, Eleret finds, contains the title ring.

It does not end when the ring falls into her hands. The tale involves a noblewoman who asks what they wear in the mountains this season, cards vaguely related to the Tarot, a precaution about besieging, or leaving, houses, a shapeshifter, a thief, and much more.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 3 out of 5]

NO I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS WAS MY FIRST WREDE NOVEL EITHER

Okay, I'm going to have to apologise to the friend who recommended this as her favourite Wrede read, because my reaction to this book is rather lukewarm. The story got going rather slowly, there were a lot of logistical conversations, and our heroine had way more trouble getting around in a skirt than I have ever had in my life, but I guess she'd never worn them before, maybe skirt-wrangling is an art that must be learned, who knows.

The story became a lot more fun at the midway point, with a whole lot of mysteries and danger erupting at once and the heroine getting into gear to fight back. There's also a lot of fun character interactions - both of Eleret's main allies are fun characters, and sparks fly between them because they're both crushing on her, and their interactions with each other were my favourite part of the book and made the second half fly along quite pleasantly as the plot thickens. But then, the resolution seemed a little too quick and easy, and I was disappointed that the legendary and terrifying Sealed Evil in a Can antagonists turned out to be...actually still safely sealed away.

In summary, this book took a while to warm up and then finished just as things were getting hot. But, my appetite is whetted to try another of Wrede's books, likely one of her historical fantasies next.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eleret is a feisty girl from the mountains. Her family receives word that her mother, a mercenary warrior, died after a battle. She goes out of the mountains to another country's capitol to retrieve her mother's belongings, only to discover that a number of other people also want her mother's belongings.

There's a light mystery. The love story is very low-key, which is nice, and Eleret has a strong sense of independence. If the story has a flaw, it's that Eleret is too composed, and all of her actions are right; the conflict is a little underwhelming, because she triumphs too easily.

[Julie Nichol · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so amazing until the end. I love the main character because she is a fighter and not afraid of the enemy. She doesn't end up cowering and letting others do the work for her. This book would have been rated higher if the ending had been better. I was hopeful, but it wasn't the ending that I would have picked. I liked how this book is more about the Cilhar than anything because they are kind of an omnipresent people in the other books. I would defiantly recommend this book.

[Ashlynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

The best part of this book is the last few pages. I found this one to be an unsatisfying overall.

[Clare Richardson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I used to love this book when I was a kid-- I have extremely fond memories of it. This is the first time I've read it in years and years, and I have to say that while it DID hold up pretty well, it wasn't as awesome as I wanted it to be. The plot didn't seem as great or as twisty, the magic didn't seem as magical, and the one character I wanted to love sort of got on my nerves. (Sad to inform that Karvonen does not hold up at age 25 the way he did at age 14.) I found myself liking Daner better in spite of all his foibles, simply because he seemed far more human-- Karvonen bothered me because he seemed to know EVERYTHING. I still found him charming and funny, just a little too much with the "I know everything because of my family". Daner, who is meant to be insufferable, is actually more interesting because he's more human. I know Eleret couldn't have ended up with Daner, and I didn't really want her to, but I didn't exactly want her to take off with Karvonen either.

The plot seemed sort of weak on the reread, although it is a fun one-- Jonystra Nirandol seemed like this very floppy and weird device, to me, and I was annoyed that Shadow-born were the plot twist but that they weren't mentioned until at LEAST halfway through the book, and there was no proper fear instilled by their mention. I didn't connect with Eleret as much as I used to when I was younger, and found her unreasonably stubborn. She was usually right, but when her common sense failed it failed in the wrong places and made her character look kind of inconsistent.

I found myself annoyed that there was no foreign Ciaronese word used until about page one hundred-- if you're going to leave it that long, leave it out entirely.

All that said, I love the atmosphere and the cultural clashes that Wrede creates here. People knowing and not knowing Cilhar customs, Eleret with her fish-out-of-water syndrome in Ciaron, the mentions of Rathane and its politics... great stuff.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

05/2012 I like the Raven Ring, but with two major reservations. The story centers around Eleret, a woman who goes to the city to retrieve her mother's things (her mother died in the military). Eleret comes from a very warlike people, or perhaps a better term would be a feuding people, and is herself very well trained in combat, especially hand to hand, throwing knives, and raven's feet (throwing weapons). However, people in the city aren't used to women who can take care of themselves, and so she spends most of the novel having to explain herself and deal with the assumptions (explicit and implicit) of everyone around her. This is a trope that I'm not very fond of, so I found it a bit grating when Eleret trips over her skirt yet again or surprises someone when she accurately throws a knife. The other reason that I can't like The Raven Ring as much as I want is the end. I don't want Eleret to end up with the thief. I don't find him particularly likable, and while he may have proved that he cares for Eleret, I'm not sure he's trustworthy and I never got the sense that there was any kind of spark or connection between the two of them. That aside, I would recommend the book to anyone who likes Wrede or sword and sorcery fantasy.

10/2015 Upon reading The Raven Ring again, I would write exactly the same review. I like it, but with reservations.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this fantasy novel as a teenager, and I still enjoy it as an adult. I liked the world-building with the clash of different cultures as part of the challenge for the young heroine. The characters were fun and likable, though I think I liked them even more when I was a teenager. Multiple readings have taken the suspense out of the story for me, but that's part of why I read it this time. I wanted a novel were the good guys work together, defeat evil, and all is right with the world again.

There was no sex. There was a very small amount of explicit bad language. There was fantasy magic (of the casting spells kind, and the spell-casting words were usually written out in the text in, I assume, a made-up language). Overall, I'd recommend this enjoyable fantasy.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what age these books are best for. On some level, a 12 yr old might enjoy them, but then there are other aspects that I think perhaps a bit older would be best. I read them in order of publication, but I think chronology would be better. The other nice thing about this series is that the books are self-contained. You do not have to read all of the books. You can pick and choose. None of the stories rely on the others. The connection is the world of Lyra and battling darkness.

I think this book may have been my favorite in the series. The characters were enjoyable to me and I like the romantic tones in this one.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is strongly written young adult fantasy novel, with a mystery, a sense of humor, and two possible romances. A lot of the humor comes from the contrasting attitudes and expectations about eligible mates of the two possible male attachments, and also from the heroine's reactions to those attitudes and expectations.

[Carly K · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fun fantasy read. While it is part of a larger series, it can easily be read on its own. Wrede's imagined world is richly rendered and compelling. The characters are well crafted and have their own desires and quirks. While there is a bit of a love triangle, it's not brought to artificial tension and is largely secondary to the book's major conflicts.

[Magda · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the characters, especially Eleret, the main character, who never did what I, or most of the other characters, expected her to. I hope to find her in other Lyra books when I hunt them down.

[Brooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite Patricia C Wrede book!

[Sarah Margolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lately I've been low-key thinking about how writers evolve over time, and being invited to beta read a first novel really got me going. I looked at the bibliographies of some of my favorite authors to see if I could remember progression, and saw that I'd never read Patricia C. Wrede's first published works, a 5 book series (this series... duh). Opportunity!

And boy did I get what I wanted, more even than I asked for. I borrowed copies from my library, and the third and fifth book had a foreword from Patricia talking about exactly this, about how she's grown as an author, with a revised and annotated version of the first chapter of the first book (Shadow Magic)... It was so perfect I didn't even notice at first, I was just so satisfied at getting an even closer look at the process than I'd expected. My luck here was astounding.

So, what do I think of this particular author's evolution? It was genuinely fascinating. I knew that she's good, I've read most of her other books and liked them, some enough to have physical copies in my strictly curated library (her Forest Chronicles, they're my most reliable cheer-up books) besides the ebooks that are what I actually read. Now I see how she developed her talents, through hard work and an openness to constructive criticism and learning. The progression was surprisingly stark, with the first book being something of a mess (the revised chapter in the aforementioned foreword shows what she could do with it later on, infinitely better) and every consequent book improved, with the last one (The Raven Ring) being truly great.

If you're only going to read one of the Lyra books, make it The Raven Ring. If you have a bit of interest in looking behind the curtain at a writer's evolution though, I enthusiastically recommend you read all five in publication order (and at least one being a later edition with the foreword). I probably wouldn't have continued past part of book one if I had only been reading for enjoyment, but reading them this way was deeply satisfying.

Because I read them as a group, with an eye to the evolution, I'm copying this as the review text for all of them. The only difference being the star rating.

[福ちゃん · Rating 5 out of 5]

I re-read this recently (thanks for adding the re-read feature, Goodreads!) and it's not my 2nd re-read, but probably my 45th (not an exaggeration) so it's about time that I finally wrote a review for this. This is what I tell people my favorite book is, without any shame that it's firmly middle-grade/YA territory. I had a paperback copy since junior high school that I carried with me everywhere, including on every family vacation we took through my graduation (my mother used to laugh at me each time she saw the increasingly worn cover).

Wrede has a way with words - I love her 'Enchanted Forest Chronicles' books, but this one has stuck with me forever. The way she describes the smell and feel of things, the atmosphere that surrounds the characters, is wonderful. It's the little details in the world that make this book so great to me, like the meanings of different braids for Cilhar and the card-charting, and the snippets of things that show you glimpses of the other societies as well. I know Eleret, the heroine, is likely far too perfect to pass any sort of MC tests nowadays, but her moments of grief and vulnerability make her easy to sympathize and relate to. The card-charting with the scrying spell scene still gives me goosebumps after all these years; there's just something to the magic here that weaves its way into your mind as you go along with the story. I think Karvonen was the first fictional character that I completely fell head over heels for - certainly very few have lived up to him since.

I suspect that this book doesn't hold up as well as I would like, but for me, it will always be my go-to read when I am sad, overwhelmed, or anxious (which happens often). When I moved to Japan, I cried the whole plane ride over, save for the time I spent reading this again to steel my nerves. I'll likely never stop re-reading this, out of nostalgic memories or the encouraging feeling it gives me, and if I ever got to meet Ms. Wrede, I'd like to thank her for writing something that has honestly meant more to me than any other book I've ever read.

[Brian Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Raven Ring was the second Lyra book I ever read, way back in the past; the main character, Eleret, is a young Cilhar woman (the Cilhar are hardy mountain folk who are trained to fight in a way that only fictional warrior clans can) who comes from the mountains to collect her deceased mother's belongings. Her mother was killed while on contract to the empire's military, but there were some mysteries to her death, as Eleret discovers, and she may need to demonstrate why nobody messes with the Cilhar at the point of a blade.

The plot could be straight out of a Western, but for using knives and throwing stars rather than six shooters; similarly, she ends up with two men helping her (a doughty warrior-mage and a sneaky thief) as she deals with ambushes and trickery designed to steal something from her mother's belongings. There is a hint of a romantic triangle that the author adroitly avoids acknowledging until the end, when the sensible Eleret (finally done with her task) slices through that as effectively as everything else.

My memory involved a lot more violent confrontation, but it betrayed me; Wrede is not someone who writes many action scenes. There are only a few actual violent confrontations and they're somewhat restrained (to go with the western analogy, this is a shoot out or two, not a standoff at a fort or taking down an entire rustling gang singlehanded).

So, for all that it involves a young character's first time in the big city and facing new cultures, it has probably the least character changes; this sort of adventure is just what a Cilhar woman deals with. Lessons get doled out, but did anybody learn anything, really?

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is the example of a good solid fantasy novel to me. old-timey setting, medium-size cast of characters starring a warrior, a wizard, and a thief, a good solid plot with a healthy dash of mystery and a little sprinkle of romance, a bit of humor, worldbuilding includes various races and cultures and lands but the focus is on one mountain warrior culture and one western-style human city, allusions to deeper lore... it's just perfect! i loved this as a child and i still love it as an adult

this book has set the standard for fantasy novels for me, and many books i try fall very short of that standard (so tempting to call out specific popular books and their failings here but i shall nobly resist). there's nothing particularly spectacular about this book that i can point to as striking, but there's nothing jarring about the setting, there's nothing weird about the writing style, there's nothing irritating about the characters. it's just good.

and a fun little tidbit, this time on rereading it i noticed the furniture (since i read a book about the history of furniture lately); i loved that our mountain warrior family has fewer stools than they have people in the family, it's a weird little detail but very plausible - most people throughout history had much less furniture than we think of as normal today, and often not everyone had somewhere to sit!

[Adela Bezemer-Cleverley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a little sad to say I was disappointed in this book, because I love The Enchanted Forest Chronicles so much and I had high hopes for Patricia C. Wrede's other books to be just as magnificent. But this was a disappointment, and I don't think I'll be reading any of the other Lyra books.

It's not exactly that the writing is bad, I think it's more that her writing is more suited for fairy tales, and TEFC are so fairy tale-esque while I feel like these books are trying to be a combination of YA and high fantasy?? I don't know, I just don't think the genre/plot fits with her writing style.

The other problem is that the whole book is set in the space of two days, and while this sometimes works in books that have a lot of flashbacks and things in them, in this case the events just seemed to drag on and on. And the characters were almost cartoonish in their personalities. And don't get me started on the almost-love-triangle that was hinted at! The romance was completely unnecessary and out of place considering all of these characters have only known each other less than 48 hours.

Anyway, one good thing is that this has made me want to reread the Enchanted Forest Chronicles again, to reassure myself that they are indeed wonderful!

[Miriam Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

When Eleret Salven’s mother is killed in battle, she journeys to the capital city Ciaron to retrieve her mother’s possessions. Among them is a ring. When she gets the ring, she starts being followed, accosted, and attacked by all sorts of people, include public officials, assassins, a fortune-telling card reader, and a shapeshifting wizard. With the help of an honorable thief and a slightly haughty but very skilled wizard swordsman, Eleret evades the people who are trying to take her ring and defeats the person who hired them all.

I enjoyed the worldbuilding in this book; it is part of a collection of books that, while not a series, all take place in the same complex world. Although it just explored a snippet of this world, I was able to get a good sense of the politics, magic, races, and history. However, I wish that the book took me on more of a journey. There was a sense of this rich world in the background, but almost all the action took place in one city. There wasn’t much of a plot either: she gets the ring, she finds out that people are trying to take it, and she stops them. The main character was interesting, but she didn’t develop or change at all.

This book is for an older YA audience that is interested in high fantasy that focuses on worldbuilding.

[Letitia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't dreadful, but it was pretty boring. Still on the fence about whether it was worth the $2 bargain price. The premise sounded fun, and I actually really love the fictional cultures and world building that Wrede did, but ultimately the whole thing falls flat. The characters never arc, the plot is very basic, and mostly populated with explanations of the thing that just happened. The author's reliance on cultural misunderstanding to propel the narrative is also maddening (oh, Eleret is confused about Ciaron customs AGAIN and we have to discuss that for two pages even thought it impacts nothing). The concept is cute, but doesn't pan out into anything. Probably will not read more by this author.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://wordnerdy.blogspot.com/2021/0...

Well, this didn’t turn out to be much of a /series/ per se, just five novels set in the same universe. This last one was pretty cute though. Our protagonist is a young woman from the warrior people, who heads to the big city to pick up her deceased mother's belongings from the army. But pretty soon a lot of mysterious people are after her, and she has to figure out why, with the help of a young noble and of a thief (there is a little bit of a love triangle, but the protagonist isn’t actually aware of it, lol). I liked the characters and story here much more than the last couple. Great ending, too. A-.