Ravenfall

Casting the Bones #2

by Sunny Moraine

In exile from her home and her people, Turn—once Crow and psychopomp-in-training—is living among the mysterious Ravens, a people steeped in magic and forgotten history. Despite a period of relative quiet, the peace can’t last. In Sol, the world of the living, the dead are rising, and they have an appetite for flesh; the Moravici tribe—supposedly stripped of power—are actually extending the dark reach of their control and coercion. The Ravens are faced with difficult decisions, but Turn fears their choice may influenced by a source that means to destroy them.

Genres: Speculative Fiction

148 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2014

About the author

Sunny Moraine is—among many other things—the author of the novella Your Shadow Half Remains, published by Tor Nightfire. Their debut short fiction collection Singing With All My Skin and Bone was released in 2016 and their short stories have been published in Tor.com, Uncanny, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Nightmare. An occasional podcaster/narrator/voice actor, they are the writer, producer, and lead actor of the serial horror drama podcast Gone, which wrapped up its first season in January 2018 and released a second season in 2022. For more info, please see their website at sunnymoraine.com.

Reviews

[Cathy Douglas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I finished this a week ago, and I'm still thinking about why it didn't work for me the way the first book did. Something about it not quite managing the leap from book to series, I think.

For one thing, switching from a single POV (Turn's) to three (Turn, Sene, and Joran) spread things a little thin.

For another, in this book some attempt was made to explain things I don't think the author even knows. Like, in a world with no sun and very little rain, what do people eat? This was merely a weirdity in the first book. But as soon as you start trying to put some substance into it, to offer partial explanation, the whole thing just falls apart. I don't know... If I'm reading a stand-alone book, and I have no idea how people survive, I can suspend disbelief and roll with it. But it's harder if the series goes further. And if the author themself starts trying to look at the question, it makes me feel like there should be a real answer somewhere. But there isn't, as far as I can tell -- at least not one that shows up in Ravenfall. The moon-only world is eery and beautiful, as long as I don't have to think about how it would actually work.

I was glad to see the Ravens have some warts after all. In fact, they were very much humanized in this book. But having them follow a charismatic leader who had not much on his side besides a loud mouth seemed kind of un-Ravenlike.

And Sene and Mica? Okay, I see it, I believe it, just the whole thing didn't feel filled-out. And the cats. And... other stuff.

So, I liked it, but it left me dwelling on the gaps rather than the high points. I'm still interested to see where it's going to go when the Rooks come fully into the picture.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

As with the first book of the series, Ravenfall is engrossing, taking place in a rich, fascinating world I can't get enough of. The more I read about Turn, the more I love her, the more I find myself really connecting with her journey and growth as a character. She's come so far in such a short period of time and yet all her decisions, every way in which she's changed is so believable and so beautifully written. I'm not the best at reviewing novels because I mostly just want to jump up and down and wave my arms and tell people READ THIS, READ THIS, READ THIS.

But seriously. READ THIS. It's gorgeous.

[Tyrannosaurus regina · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it took me a little more effort to get into this book than the first, it was no less engrossing once I got there. One of the things I appreciate most about Sunny's writing is that I can trust them to give real thought to the decisions they make and the topics they bring up, and understand and respect the sometimes many implications of those decisions. Reading their works is a richer and more rewarding experience because of it.