Reviews with content warning for Body horror - An Enchantment of Ravens

Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson

25 reviews

fionamatilda's review

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adventurous emotional lighthearted mysterious relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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karin_goodreads's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

5.0

This is my all time favourite book!

Isobel and Rook are so FRICKING CUTE! I have no other words for the way this book made me feel, except that I just felt really happy and content after reading it. And now I just think of craving more.

I'm sorry, this book just ✨stole✨ my heart and many probably won't understand such an intense liking to the book and it's characters, but there was something magical in it, I swear! The book literally used some kind of magic on me, because I genuinely enjoyed every part of it. I remember reading and always being like: "I can't stop!"

The famous teapot scene, where Rook almost got "assassinated" by a teapot was as cute as I imagined. And not to mention the fact that Rook could turn into a raven... those birds are so cool and I love that he can do that! Please, I need more!!

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hanna's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This whole novel feels like a fever dream, the main character even says so. As a chronically ill person, who often experiences fever dreams (I'm somewhat of an expert on the subject), I can't help but agree. Let's look at similarities:

1. Did this feel almost like a normal dream (fae characters, human girl who's REALLY good at painting, everyone's royal)? Yes.

2. Did it also feel just a bit weird (ugly glamours, blood = pretty flowers??)? Yes.

3. Was it still more on the fun dream side than the nightmare one? Yes. Will be able to tell friends & family about it.

4. Will I forget about it very soon? Yes.

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moonchild_cos's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.5

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macliffe's review

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adventurous emotional lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Uses a lot of tropes, but if you like those tropes like I did it I’d perfectly charming. A great palate cleanser. Like Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries meets The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea.

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laurenevlyn's review

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The amount of times I was giggling and blushing throughout this book is actually insane. I thoroughly enjoyed An Enchantment of Ravens and had so much fun reading it. I definitely agree with my favorite booktuber, Caricanread, who says that this book is written like a fairytale. Truer words have never been spoken. The main part I enjoyed about this book was the romance. It was extremely fast-paced yet very believable and well done, which is a hard combination to achieve. Rook is the love of my life and Isobel made a wonderfully clever protagonist (and their chemistry is amazing as I said earlier)! All in all a wonderful book that I very much recommend!

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littleflowerfairy's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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magicshop's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

I wanted that smell more than anything I had ever wanted before. I wanted it with a terrifying thirst. Not him, exactly, but rather whatever great, mysterious change it represented—a promise that somewhere, the world was different.

you should read this book if...

you put a lot of stock into the unique atmosphere of a book/story
you want a short, easy-to-read autumn vibes plot with beautiful prose

the good

a likable main character. very heavy on the ymmv here as she's genuinely not that different from most ya heroines, but i liked her practicality and reliance on brains rather than her heart in most situations. it provided a good contrast to the male love interest, who's all heart, and served as a bit of an interesting genre bend.
to me the appeal of the story relied mainly on the worldbuilding and atmospheric qualities, both things it did especially well. it felt almost like a fairytale to read, in a pleasant way, especially
Spoiler
the ending sequence with all the tidbits about every character we'd met moving on with their lives
.
i really enjoyed the inclusion of "Craft" in the story, which means literally any activity humans perform that turns one thing into another, no matter how minimal (art, cooking, etc). fae, on the other hand, are incapable of change, metaphorically as well as literally, and require humans to perform these tasks for them. i kind of wish the book had either been longer or part one of a series, though, because i wanted to see much more of this aspect than we ended up with.
as an artist myself, i loved the pivotal role isobel's skills had on the plot. it wasn't a one-off mention or relagated strictly to the prologue, but in fact rather important, multiple times, in the course of the story.
gruesome monstrous fae creatures? sign me up!

the bad

the romance is very instalovey, and though it's further developed later on in the story, it never really manages to grow beyond that, in my opinion. i can almost see why isobel would be fascinated by rook, with him being the only fae to ever display emotion so openly. on top of that, being only 17, she's liable to be very easily impressionable despite all her carefulness to be responsible and measured in every aspect of her life. rook, on the other hand, is a centuries-old magical creature, who's certainly met and made friends with enough humans in his long life to not be so taken by a random 17 year old... right?? when relationships happen between immortals and mortals i usually need more interesting and far deeper reasons for the immortal to be so taken with the human, because one of the most interesting things about immortals is that they've lived so long that many things have lost their initial magic to them. what was it about isobel that sparked that flame again in rook's heart? we have no idea! and that's boring!
the author tries so hard to sell the romance as "forbidden" that she leaps across to the other side into nearly comical heternormative insensitivity. there's one passage later on in the book that sums up what i mean: "I had no way to prove that the love Rook and I felt for each other was real and that we deserved every desperate, foolhardy inch of it, and I was already tired, so tired, of bearing its weight as a failure. A crime." this would've been a banger had it been written about a queer couple, but alas, rogerson had no such excuse.
again, everyone's straight. everyone's white. worst of all, everyone's straight and white immortal beings. my dude, you cannot convince me in a million years that every immortal race wouldn't be queer as fuck as a rule after a couple centuries of existence to explore every aspect of sexuality and romance. anyway, in my head rook is brown, but he was only described as "tanned" i believe, which can be taken either way. so i'm not giving this any points on that front.
the plot structure is kind of a mess the more you think about it. they just
Spoiler
wander back and forth in a forest for 90% of the first half in various states of undress and injury, then some more for the 2nd half until they finally get to an Important Place, and then rook decides to do a fakeout a challenge @ the alder king and run away (?????). i'm no proper writer myself but even i know a little polish and less meandering would've done this book a lot of favors.

the complicated

i don't really know what to think of gadfly
Spoiler
literally playing chess with 99% of the plot and winning. he turned out to be a bit of a walking deus ex machina and took away a lot of my interest in the actual story after the reveal (i'd suspected it since isobel found out he was the reason rook met her, but i'd hoped against it the whole time lol).
rook is boring to me, period. this doesn't go in the bad section because it almost gave him a manic pixie dream boy quality when compared to isobel, who was far more appealing as a character, and that's a little bit of a positive in the end. i do love reversals of that trope.
i shipped isobel more with a character she met twice but had more in common with and better scenes with than with rook (
Spoiler
aster
). i rest my case
too much romance focus. i deserved more creepy fairy worldbuilding instead 😞

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alanafiuza's review

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emotional relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix

5.0

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epsyphus's review

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adventurous funny hopeful fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

4.0

I really liked this. It was a cool take on fair folk/human relations. The romance was a lot more love-at-first-sight than I typically like, but it didn’t really detract from my enjoyment.

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