The Raven Scholar (Hodgson)
Jun. 15th, 2026 06:49 am3+/5. The Emperors of Orrun have been chosen for hundreds of years by a multi-part contest between candidates from the different Houses factions of the Empire: Raven, Fox, Tiger, Ox, Bear, Monkey, Hound, and Dragon. It is now time to pick a new Emperor, and this AU Triwizard tournament, as ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
isis put it in her review and now I can't unsee it these Trials are about to begin again. Neema Kraa, the emperor's brilliant and socially awkward Raven High Scholar, who obtained her position from an act in her past that causes everyone else to look at her askance, is drawn in to the Trials in a way that she didn't expect.
Before I start going on, a couple of things: The first thing you should know about this book -- and fortunately I did look this up halfway through -- is that it is the first book of a trilogy, and though it comes to a coherent conclusion, it's sort of like saying The Empire Strikes Back comes to a coherent conclusion.The second thing I should say: I was "spoiled" for this before I read it and it was a good thing -- the prologue of this book (which is very very long) is not an accurate representation of what the rest of the book is about (see the first paragraph). (I have my doubts as to whether the prologue should even be there -- I see why the author felt it should be, but it just feels like there might have been better ways.) Okay, onward!
This was a very interesting book to read after The Everlasting, because although it's not a perfect book, it's a book and not a fanfic, and I ended up liking it much better than Everlasting as both a book and as a Hugo candidate (and probably ended up liking it much better in general than I might have otherwise, in fact). There's a ton of worldbuilding, a ton of characters -- the world feels much more lived-in -- and a ton of plot, and it was rather a relief after dealing with ersatz worldbuilding and only three characters.
The thing I do find that it shares with Everlasting is its compelling nature. After the prologue (which did drag for me), I always wanted to know what happened next, and I never thought "gosh this is going on too long," even though it's a long book. Then again, I am an absolute sucker for the whole Triwizard-ish setup of "the candidates have tests, the tests say something about them, plus which there's external weirdness going on that they have to navigate" (see also: Gideon the Ninth) so, I mean, I was never going to really get tired of that. But also there's enough plot, and even though the prose is a bit odd (see later) it is compelling, which counts for a lot, for me.
One aspect of it that becomes more and more important as the book goes on has to do with the anthropomorphic-animal factions of the Empire, which are also worshipped as gods. There was a bit in the middle where I was kind of unsure about the integration, but I was mostly convinced of it by the end. Though I do sort of roll my eyes a bit at books like this one where half the characters are atheist, and then oh, hey, it turns out that the gods have a long-standing history of involving themselves in the world. Yeah, actually, I think the culture of the world would be different in that case, especially considering it took thousands of years for our not-so-god-involved world to get to the point where large numbers of people were atheist! People would still have religious issues in such a world, they'd just be different -- are the gods actually good? do we have free will? what does that even mean? etc. -- it's one of the reasons I really like Bujold's Chalion books -- anyway...
I mentioned it's not perfect. It's really actually quite flawed in a number of ways. First, it's a long book, and there are parts that just aren't consistent in terms of characterization, etc. For example, there's a passage where Neema ruminates on how the emperor is the only person she trusts without question, and I'm all, "wait, you mean the guy who literally condemned you to death a few chapters back? That guy?" (I do wonder whether I should blame this on the author or the editor -- seems like a lot of this kind of thing should have been caught during edit.) Gaida Rack, the Galinda-type figure, is also very weirdly characterized; half the time as "everyone loves her," and the other half of the time as "she's so mean that everyone should hate her," and I am still not quite sure what was going on with her. These kinds of things sound nitpicky but are actually really important for a book such as this that lives or dies on its plot and characterization-as-plot (which is a big part of it). There's a major plot element I'll talk about in the spoiler section that doesn't land like it could have because of it.
Neema, the main character, is written rather oddly to my eye; she's self-aware enough to sometimes realize she's not doing things in the way calculated to win friends and influence people, and she also has been in the Emperor's court long enough to analyze a lot of the social games that are being played, but at the same time she is all angsty that people don't take her seriously because she's not playing the court social games at all... which is an odd combination. (And sometimes I wanted to just shake her; look, if you're making the choice not to play the game, then fine, but own it, don't just sit around unhappily angsting about it, you have been around court long enough that you demonstrably know what's going on!) Also I was shocked to realize, after reading reviews of the book, that she's in her 30s; the whole time I was reading (since chronology is not my strong point) I thought she was in her early 20s, in the way of being very un-self-aware and very angsty but also the way that she's so concerned with fitting in, at the same time as she's clearly not fitting in at all. (Saffy, in The Incandescent, is maybe a decade older, I think? but is a much much more realistic character in my opinion, in the sense that she both understands and plays the game sometimes, and sometimes doesn't do either, and also has kind of dispensed with worrying about fitting in and has mostly accepted that sometimes she does and sometimes she's just going to be unhappy about not.)
The tone is also weirdly inconsistent. Sometimes you have, you know, standard Epic Fantasy tone. Other times you get stuff like this: Cain had to admit, she looked hot. They both did. Rivenna was like an evil butterfly and Ruko was like a big, sexy wardrobe that might kill you, and these were both very much Cain's type. Cain had a lot of types. Maybe it's just because I grew up reading 80s-90s epic fantasy, but I'm weirded out by this kind of tone! (Also, I always am annoyed by fantasy books where everyone speaks English and uses Arabic numerals and an English-introduced symbol for infinity: did you worldbuild in such a way that any of this makes any sense? No you did not!)
( Book-destroying spoilers )
This review makes it sound like I didn't like it, and I did! I think it's the kind of book that is super entertaining but it's very interesting to discuss its flaws (whereas for The Everlasting I found it more interesting to discuss why it was compelling). I think it's sufficiently flawed that I don't want it to win the Hugos, but I enjoyed it enough that I will definitely read the sequel if it pops up on Hugo lists next year, and I am also interested in voting for Hodgson for the Astounding award, because I think it's ambitiously flawed. Ack, this means I need to read the Astounding part of the packet now. We'll see if I get around to that.
isis put it in her review and now I can't unsee itBefore I start going on, a couple of things: The first thing you should know about this book -- and fortunately I did look this up halfway through -- is that it is the first book of a trilogy, and though it comes to a coherent conclusion, it's sort of like saying The Empire Strikes Back comes to a coherent conclusion.The second thing I should say: I was "spoiled" for this before I read it and it was a good thing -- the prologue of this book (which is very very long) is not an accurate representation of what the rest of the book is about (see the first paragraph). (I have my doubts as to whether the prologue should even be there -- I see why the author felt it should be, but it just feels like there might have been better ways.) Okay, onward!
This was a very interesting book to read after The Everlasting, because although it's not a perfect book, it's a book and not a fanfic, and I ended up liking it much better than Everlasting as both a book and as a Hugo candidate (and probably ended up liking it much better in general than I might have otherwise, in fact). There's a ton of worldbuilding, a ton of characters -- the world feels much more lived-in -- and a ton of plot, and it was rather a relief after dealing with ersatz worldbuilding and only three characters.
The thing I do find that it shares with Everlasting is its compelling nature. After the prologue (which did drag for me), I always wanted to know what happened next, and I never thought "gosh this is going on too long," even though it's a long book. Then again, I am an absolute sucker for the whole Triwizard-ish setup of "the candidates have tests, the tests say something about them, plus which there's external weirdness going on that they have to navigate" (see also: Gideon the Ninth) so, I mean, I was never going to really get tired of that. But also there's enough plot, and even though the prose is a bit odd (see later) it is compelling, which counts for a lot, for me.
One aspect of it that becomes more and more important as the book goes on has to do with the anthropomorphic-animal factions of the Empire, which are also worshipped as gods. There was a bit in the middle where I was kind of unsure about the integration, but I was mostly convinced of it by the end. Though I do sort of roll my eyes a bit at books like this one where half the characters are atheist, and then oh, hey, it turns out that the gods have a long-standing history of involving themselves in the world. Yeah, actually, I think the culture of the world would be different in that case, especially considering it took thousands of years for our not-so-god-involved world to get to the point where large numbers of people were atheist! People would still have religious issues in such a world, they'd just be different -- are the gods actually good? do we have free will? what does that even mean? etc. -- it's one of the reasons I really like Bujold's Chalion books -- anyway...
I mentioned it's not perfect. It's really actually quite flawed in a number of ways. First, it's a long book, and there are parts that just aren't consistent in terms of characterization, etc. For example, there's a passage where Neema ruminates on how the emperor is the only person she trusts without question, and I'm all, "wait, you mean the guy who literally condemned you to death a few chapters back? That guy?" (I do wonder whether I should blame this on the author or the editor -- seems like a lot of this kind of thing should have been caught during edit.) Gaida Rack, the Galinda-type figure, is also very weirdly characterized; half the time as "everyone loves her," and the other half of the time as "she's so mean that everyone should hate her," and I am still not quite sure what was going on with her. These kinds of things sound nitpicky but are actually really important for a book such as this that lives or dies on its plot and characterization-as-plot (which is a big part of it). There's a major plot element I'll talk about in the spoiler section that doesn't land like it could have because of it.
Neema, the main character, is written rather oddly to my eye; she's self-aware enough to sometimes realize she's not doing things in the way calculated to win friends and influence people, and she also has been in the Emperor's court long enough to analyze a lot of the social games that are being played, but at the same time she is all angsty that people don't take her seriously because she's not playing the court social games at all... which is an odd combination. (And sometimes I wanted to just shake her; look, if you're making the choice not to play the game, then fine, but own it, don't just sit around unhappily angsting about it, you have been around court long enough that you demonstrably know what's going on!) Also I was shocked to realize, after reading reviews of the book, that she's in her 30s; the whole time I was reading (since chronology is not my strong point) I thought she was in her early 20s, in the way of being very un-self-aware and very angsty but also the way that she's so concerned with fitting in, at the same time as she's clearly not fitting in at all. (Saffy, in The Incandescent, is maybe a decade older, I think? but is a much much more realistic character in my opinion, in the sense that she both understands and plays the game sometimes, and sometimes doesn't do either, and also has kind of dispensed with worrying about fitting in and has mostly accepted that sometimes she does and sometimes she's just going to be unhappy about not.)
The tone is also weirdly inconsistent. Sometimes you have, you know, standard Epic Fantasy tone. Other times you get stuff like this: Cain had to admit, she looked hot. They both did. Rivenna was like an evil butterfly and Ruko was like a big, sexy wardrobe that might kill you, and these were both very much Cain's type. Cain had a lot of types. Maybe it's just because I grew up reading 80s-90s epic fantasy, but I'm weirded out by this kind of tone! (Also, I always am annoyed by fantasy books where everyone speaks English and uses Arabic numerals and an English-introduced symbol for infinity: did you worldbuild in such a way that any of this makes any sense? No you did not!)
( Book-destroying spoilers )
This review makes it sound like I didn't like it, and I did! I think it's the kind of book that is super entertaining but it's very interesting to discuss its flaws (whereas for The Everlasting I found it more interesting to discuss why it was compelling). I think it's sufficiently flawed that I don't want it to win the Hugos, but I enjoyed it enough that I will definitely read the sequel if it pops up on Hugo lists next year, and I am also interested in voting for Hodgson for the Astounding award, because I think it's ambitiously flawed. Ack, this means I need to read the Astounding part of the packet now. We'll see if I get around to that.
