A review by barrettbooks
In the Ravenous Dark by A.M. Strickland

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-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

3.75

I have been struggling to write this review for awhile and I am not sure why. I definitely enjoyed it! But for some reason it has been difficult for me to express my exact feelings. As I mentioned, I enjoyed this book but the narration never quite clicked with me so felt very distanced from it as well. I did care about a couple of the characters, but mostly the book felt like things happening without any emotional impact on me. Other than that unfortunately quirk of my personal reading experience, In The Ravenous Dark was very much my jam. It features a complex magical world with interesting rules and boundaries and plenty of discoveries for the characters to make as the narrative continues about what the exact nature of that world is. It features a lot of queer characters, including pan, lesbian, ace, aro, and nonbinary rep, as well as polyamory. I especially loved the inclusion of queerplatonic relationships. The book does that thing where fantasy characters have basically all the same words we have but not for queer identities (so it never actually says "lesbian" or "nonbinary") but does include scenes of characters talking openly and vulnerably with each other about their identities and feelings which is both very cute and does make the intended representation fairly clear. I loved the evolving world view of the protagonist and her growth during the book. And I loved several of the side characters. I would still definitely recommend this book to people (and have already) and will definitely be picking up the author's future work.