Ravenstone

The Raven Chronicles #3

by Deborah Cannon

A red-blooded heroic rescue that spans Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands to the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga where a psychotic relic hunter holds an archaeologist's daughter hostage.

Genres: Fiction

298 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 11, 2008

About the author

Deborah Cannon was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is the author of numerous short stories and six novels. Her short story Twilight Glyph won an Honourable Mention in the 2013 Canadian Tales of the Fantastic Short Story Contest. She has contributed articles on writing to the Canadian Writer's Guide and the professional writer's web sites, absolutewrite.com and suite101.com. She is author of the archaeological manual, Marine Fish Osteology: A Manual for Archaeologists. Most recently, her anthropological thriller The Raven's Pool was cited in a scholarly study, Archaeology is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture (Holtorf 2007) alongside treasure hunters Indiana Jones and Lara Croft. Her second novel, White Raven was a 2007 Adult Summer Reading Club pick at the Hamilton Public Library. The series continues with Ravenstone and Raven's Blood. Elizabeth Latimer: Pirate Hunter marks the beginning of a new series for teens or anyone who can imagine themselves encountering a pirate.

See her website at:
http://deborahlcannon.wix.com/the-rav...

Reviews

[Dolf van der Haven · Rating 1 out of 5]

Around-the-world #186: Tonga 🇹🇴.
This book could have been an "Indiana Jones goes to Tonga" type story or some other B-movie material if it hadn't been written so poorly. Instead of an engaging story with a bunch of archeologists competing to get some artifact, we get flat, undeveloped characters that are all so annoying that nobody cares what happens to them, especially when they maie one stupid decision after the other; not one, but multiple tacky love triangles (or at least a love hexagon); some fuzzy mythology stemming from a Canadian native American tribe that somehow made it to Tonga (or not); and the obvious villain that will be vanquished in the end.
There are some interesting mentions of Tongan culture that made reading this worth the effort, but other than that this book is wholly forgettable.

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this, the third book in a series by Deborah Cannon, so much so I'm very sorry I haven't discovered her series before! Although the book can be read as a stand alone, there is a brief summary of each book in the Author's Note, and a few hints scattered throughout on what has happened before. I definitely want to read the first two, "The Raven's Pool" and "White Raven" and get caught up.

This book, "Ravenstone", takes the reader from the land of the Haida in the Queen Charlotte Islands off the west coast of Canada, to the small tropical country of Tonga in the South Pacific, made up of 169 islands. Fact and fiction blend so well, and the descriptions of the locations almost take the reader there physically. Jake Lalonde, is an archaeologist looking for his heritage connection to the Haida, knowing his father's line is the Raven. His girlfriend, Angeline Lisbon, is doing research for her PhD in archaeology, her dissertation in primitive art migration. A discovery of an ancient Raven petroglyph in the Queen Charlottes and simultaneously in Tonga puts them at cross-purposes on their individual theories and sends Angeline off to work in Tonga.

An ill-considered secret withheld by Jake puts even more pressure on their relationship as she is about to leave. At the same time their nemesis, a millionaire who had attacked Angeline in an earlier book, has managed to buy his way out of jail and is on the hunt, planning a program of terror for both Jake and Angeline. It was her testimony that sent him to prison. With the story set, the stalking begins, the chase is on across the ocean, there seems no escape, he seems to always be there, but is he? It's as though he is everywhere.

This very well-written book of mystery and adventure will keep the reader's attention as the suspense builds. The background is beautiful, the characters are fascinating and diverse. It hardly seems possible that such darkness can lurk in such beauty. The writing is taut, the research very deep, and the outcome not necessarily as one might think. Illness, treachery, murder, mythology, artifacts, and origins are all there. An exciting journey through relationships right back through centuries. A great story. 5 stars.

[Jennifer Osterman · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the Pacific coast of British Columbia to the Polynesian island of Tonga, the Haida artifacts display a story for those who know how to look. Jake Lalonde is trying to discover his heritage, opposed at every turn by his nemesis, Clifford Radison, distracted by beautiful women and haunted by the mistakes of his past.

I received this book through a member giveaway, Like some other readers, I was a little worried that I was going to have trouble starting a series in the middle, but the author has done a good job introducing the people that carry forward through the series. I do wonder if I would have been more engaged in the characters if I had been reading about them from the start, though. In this installment, they seemed flat and underdeveloped. The villain was simply evil, and the two main characters, Jake and Angeline, did not always act logically to me. As another reviewer pointed out, they were very judgmental of other cultures for being archaeologists. I would think people that spend their lives studying other cultures would be more open to various ways of life, such as cross-dressing and tattoos, and less dismissive of the sale of primitive artifacts on the street.

I was, however, interested in the story. I enjoyed the tale, even if the characters frustrated me by their actions - withholding information from each other and allowing bad things to happen. If this had been a movie, I would have been shouting at the screen, "Don't split up! Don't you know this is a horror movie?"

The author definitely has a way with setting the tone of the story, a way of building suspense and a way of setting the scene. I am very likely to return to books 1 and 2 to read up on what I missed, and it will be interesting to see more from this author in the future.

[NarcissusTea · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I won this book through Member Giveaway and have not read the first two books in the series.[return][return]First, the parts I didn't like. I found the characters to always choose a course of action that made little or no sense to me. The heroes have a powerful enemy whom they put in jail right at the beginning of the book. Threatening emails, text messages and photographs are sent to them, and someone is even killed. Rather than going to the police, they each hide things from the other in hopes of ""protecting"" the other. Where does this lead? Disaster, illness, kidnapping, rape and death! If only they'd been sensible and gone to the police in the first place.[return][return]I found some of the reactions of the heroes quite contrary to what I expected in other ways. They are archaeologists and anthropologists, and yet the woman refers to tattooing as ""mutilation"", and expresses distaste at a beauty pageant in which there are men acting like and dressed as women. She's taken aback at the basic living conditions in Tonga. I would have thought that someone in her position would have been a little more open-minded, and might have had to rough it a few times in the course of her work. [return][return]The man sees Tongans selling artifacts and shrugs it off as ""just some bits of pottery."" Maybe it was just that the archaeological site I was at was fairly sparse in terms of artifacts, but every single scrap of pottery we dug out of the ground was carefully recorded and catalogued. I cannot imagine any archaeologist worth their salt just blithely shrugging that off.[return][return]I really enjoyed the way the author set the scenes. I found her descriptions to be engrossing, and I could easily picture Tonga and its inhabitants. It was nice to read about a warm and sunny south Pacific island during a cold and rainy spring. The book was paced well, though sometimes it seemed as though there was a lot of build up to an action scene, but the action scene itself didn't last very long.[return][return]It wasn't very difficult to follow along without having read the first two books. I'm contemplating reading them, but the author has made the villain so completely detestable, I'm not sure if I want to read any more about him. He was quite nasty! If the first two books take place along the Pacific coast, I'd really like to see how she describes it. I'll have to think about it some more."

[Michele bookloverforever · Rating 1 out of 5]

did not care for this.