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Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780441013128
ISBN number: 0441013120
Label: Ace
Manufacturer: Ace
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 400
Printing Date: July 26, 2005
Publishing house: Ace
Sale Popularity Level: 24078
Studio: Ace
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
The Traveler Seraph must use all her cunning and ability as a Raven mage to track down an unimaginable force of destruction known as the Shadowed.
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
I started my acquaintance with this author when I picked up her series about Mercedes Thompson, the VW mechanic in the Tri-Cities (she also happens to be a shape changer). I live near the area and was also looking for some current supernatural fiction with a romantic bent. Steamy sex scenes are not what I look for, nor does Ms Briggs burden her stories with these crutches.
In her Raven series she shows the same great talent as a writer and uses the more usual "serfs and kings" historical setting. Her style translates well and the world she creates is very interesting. Character developement makes it to about level 8 out of 10, the plot is standard good vs evil.
If you liked her other books and enjoy fantasy settings I would definitely recommend this duology.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is a worthy sequel to Raven's Shadow. It has more action and provides an enjoyable completion
Rated by buyers 
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I picked up Raven's Strike based on the strength of the reviews for the prequel. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I will read nearly anything in the speculative fiction realm, and I did finish the book over the course of several months.
A few positive items first. Briggs has a good feel for pacing dialog, and she did a great job with the verbal interactions in the book. Briggs does a good job with descriptions of landscapes and the use of multiple senses in her descriptions.
Now on to the main plot ...
[Spoilers]
The premise of the book is interesting. Long ago there were two primal gods, the Weaver (creator) and the Stalker (destroyer). The Stalker fell in love with a mortal, and, when the mortal died, the Stalker took actions that would have destroyed the world, but the Weaver cast a spell that separated the two primal gods from intervening directly in the world. Instead a group of six lesser gods was placed in the world to draw off and balance the energy of the Weaver and Stalker.
All was well until a proud mage disrupted the balance. The goddess of magic, the Raven, was worshipped in the great city of the land. One day a powerful mage elected to strip the powers from the god of war to make his son a great warrior. In completing the ritual, the god of war was slain. This allowed the Stalker's destructive powers to be unleashed into the land and threaten the world's existence. The wizards collectively with the Raven's help sacrificed the city and the gods to put the veil back in place between the primal gods and the created world.
The problem was that the newly created balance was unstable. A clever wizard could reach through the veil and tap into the Stalker's energy. This being the power of destruction, it caused death and chaos to follow in the wake of the newly elevated wizard. Wizard's that used these procedures were called Shadowed.
The book revolves around the quest to find out the information described above and to find a way to defeat a powerful shadowed mage. Of course, the group is successful.
There are a number of lesser plots in the books. One of the involves figuring out why one of the character comes off as ancient, but appears young. (Yes, it is the obvious answer.) Another challenge is trying to figure out how the shadowed has drawn the power of the clans (the god given powers) away from some of the Travelers (what the mages are called) into gems (this one kind of sputters out at the end). While you have the fantasy explanation for what happened, it really is not a solution at all. And, there are others.
The main action in this book occurs almost entirely in the last 25 pages of a several hundred page book and could have done with some excitement earlier in the book.
While I appreciated the interesting idea of a purposely layered cosmology, I found the execution to be a bit uneven. Sometimes abilities worked, and sometimes they did not. Rather than feeling like this randomness was a part of the story, you feel that it is forced. The main antagonist should have been found out early on. The emperor should not have been able to break the spell holding him. (But, I did appreciate the D&D reference!) If the Weaver could not have helped at the end then how did he help out earlier in the book. If the Stalker is the destroyer then why did he not just let his pawn destroy the world. Etc.
If you enjoyed the very first book then you will probably enjoy the last fifty pages of this book, but I do not recommend the very first several hundred.
Rated by buyers -
I don't know if it possible but Patricia Briggs has astounded this reader once again. She has outdone herself with Book 2 of The Raven Duology.
Vivid, imaginative, full of mystery, supsense and magic. What more can you ask for?
Rated by buyers -
_Raven's Strike_ is a continuation of _Raven's Shadow_. _Raven's Strike_ starts with the magicly gifted Seraph going home with her husband Tier, their sons Jes and Lehr, and their companion Hennea. At the end of _Raven's Shadow_, Tier had been rescued from an evil cult by the others, and the kingdom's young emperor had been saved at the same time. Tier had been badly beaten, but also had demonstrated a gift for a type of magic usually only seen within Travelers such as Hennea, Seraph, and Seraph's children Jes, Lehr and Rinnie.
Once they get home, things don't slow down for Tier and Seraph and their family. The new emperor Phoran needs help rooting out a conspiracy against him; Tier is sick and steadily getting sicker; and there is a Shadowed enemy still around who is killing Traveler clans. Jes and Hennea are still trying to sort out the nature of their relationship, or whether they even want to have a relationship, while Seraph and Hennea are trying to work out the pecking order between two very strong-minded and dominant females. In the middle of all this, it becomes necessary to find a lost city that hasn't existed for over a thousand years, before the emperor is overthrown and Tier fades away into a mindless shell.
I read _Raven's Strike_ without having read _Raven's Shadow_, the very first in the series. Consequently, there were comments and concepts in _Raven's Strike_ that I didn't understand right away. It would probably be better for the reader to start with _Raven's Shadow_.
With that admission out of the way -- I loved this book! The action scenes tended to be a bit brief, but watching the growing relationships between characters was a worthy trade for that. I liked the strong characters, the explanations of magic and how the Traveler magic works was interesting, the mermori and library with its Scholar were fascinating to read about, and the whole story of the dead gods and the balance of the Weaver and the Stalker was really well done.
However, before I suggested this book to anyone, I would recommend they read _Raven's Shadow_ first.
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