The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It just goes to show I shouldn't pay too much heed to the bookshelves certain books are put in. I honestly thought this was going to be a Dark Academia type novel. Spoiler. It isn't.

It IS, however, a fantasy court intrigue novel that sits firmly in the Ember in Ashes and Sarah Maas's YA categories.

It's a slow burn for well into half of the novel and I admit I wasn't all that into it at first. But later, when the Contenders and the trials and the magic finally started to kick in, I did have a good time.

It's solid. I can't say it's brilliant, but it follows its plays quite well and the Eight are pretty interesting in an Aesop and Chinese mythology kind of way.

But mostly, this novel follows a long tradition of female-centric Epic Fantasy. It was pretty good.

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