The Raven Scholar is an epic fantasy and the first book of a projected trilogy. It is Antonia Hodgson’s first published fantasy novel; her previous published novels are historical mystery. I would classify this as adult fantasy — the main character is thirty-four with a stable court position — but it has strong YA vibes because of the generational turnover feel of the main plot.

Eight years before the start of this book, Andren Valit attempted to assassinate the emperor and failed. Since then, his widow and three children — twins Yana and Ruko and infant Nisthala — have been living in disgrace in a cramped apartment, subject to constant inspections and suspicion. As the story opens, they have been summoned to appear before the emperor, escorted by a young and earnest Hound (essentially the state security services) named Shal Worthy. The resulting interrogation is full of dangerous traps. Not all of them will be avoided.

The formalization of the consequences of that imperial summons falls to an unpopular Junior Archivist (Third Class) whose one notable skill is her penmanship. A meeting that was disasterous for the Valits becomes unexpectedly fortunate for the archivist, albeit with a poisonous core.

Eight years later, Neema Kraa is High Scholar, and Emperor Bersun’s twenty-four years of permitted reign is coming to an end. The Festival is about to begin. One representative from each of the empire’s eight anats (religious schools) will compete in seven days of Trials, save for the Dragons who do not want the throne and will send a proxy. The victor according to the Trials scoring system will become emperor and reign unquestioned for twenty-four years or until resignation. This is the system that put an end to the era of chaos and has been in place for over a thousand years.

On the eve of the Trials, the Raven contender is found murdered. Neema is immediately a suspect; she even has reasons to suspect herself. She volunteers to lead the investigation because she has to know what happened. She is also volunteered to be the replacement Raven contender. There is no chance that she will become emperor; she doesn’t even know how to fight. But agnostic Neema has a rather unexpected ally.

As the last chime fades we drop neatly on to the balcony’s rusting hand rail, folding our wings with a soft shuffle. Noon, on the ninth day of the eighth month, 1531. Neema Kraa’s lodgings. We are here, exactly where we should be, at exactly the right moment, because we are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

The Raven Scholar is a rather good epic fantasy, with some caveats that I’ll get to in a moment, but I found it even more fascinating as a genre artifact.

I’ve read my share of epic fantasy over the years, although most of my familiarity of the current wave of new adult fairy epics comes from reviews rather than personal experience. The Raven Scholar is epic fantasy, through and through. There is court intrigue, a main character who is a court functionary unexpectedly thrown into the middle of some problem, civilization-wide stakes, dramatic political alliances, detailed magic and mythological systems, and gods. There were moments that reminded me of a Guy Gavriel Kay novel, although Hodgson’s characters tend more towards disarming moments of humanization instead of Kay’s operatic scenes of emotional intensity.

But The Raven Scholar is also a murder mystery, complete with a crime scene, clues, suspects, evidence, an investigation, a possibly compromised detective, and a morass of possible motives and red herrings. I’m not much of a mystery reader, but this didn’t feel like sort of ancillary mystery that might crop up in the course of a typical epic fantasy. It felt like a full-fledged investigation with an amateur detective; one can tell that Hodgson’s previous four books were historical mysteries.

And then there’s the Trials, which are the centerpiece of the book.

This book helped me notice that people (okay, me, I’m the people) have been sleeping on the influence of The Hunger Games, Battle Royale, and reality TV (specifically Survivor) on genre fiction, possibly because the more obvious riffs on the idea (Powerless, The Selection) have been young adult or new adult. Once I started looking, I realized this idea is everywhere now: Throne of Glass, Fourth Wing, even The Night Circus to some extent. Competitions with consequences are having a moment.

I suspect having a competition to decide the next emperor is going to strike some traditional fantasy readers as sufficiently absurd and unbelievable that it will kick them out of the book. I had a moment of “okay, this is weird, why would anyone stick with this system for so long” myself. But I would encourage such readers to interrogate whether that’s only a response from unfamiliarity; after all, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government either. This is hardly the most unrealistic epic fantasy trope, and it has the advantage of being a hell of a plot generator when handled well.

Hodgson handles it well. Society in this novel is structured around the anats and the eight Guardians, gods who, according to myth, had returned seven times previously to save the world, but who will destroy the world when they return again. Each Guardian represents a group of characteristics and useful societal functions: the Ox is trustworthy, competent and hard-working; the Fox is a trickster and a rule-bender; the Raven is shrewd and careful and is the Guardian of scholars and lawyers. Each Trial is organized by one of the anats and tests the contenders for the skills most valued by that Guardian, often in subtle and rather ingenious ways. There are flaws here that you could poke at if you wanted to, but I was charmed and thoroughly entertained by how well Hodgson weaves the story around the Trials and uses the conflicting values to create character conflict, unexpected alliances, and engrossing plot.

Most importantly for a book of this sort, I liked Neema. She has a charming combination of competence, quirks (she is almost physically unable to not correct people’s factual errors), insecurity, imposter syndrome, and determination. She is way out of her depth and knows it, but she has an ethical core and an insatiable curiosity that won’t let her leave the central mysteries of the book alone. And the character dynamics are great; there are a lot of characters, including the competition problem of having to juggle eight contenders and give them all sufficient characterization to be meaningful, but this book uses its length to give each character some room to breathe. This is a long book, well over 600 pages, but it felt packed with events and plot twists. After every chapter I had to fight the urge to read just one more.

The biggest drawback of this book is that it is very much the first book of a trilogy, none of the other volumes are out yet, and the ending is rather nasty. This is the sort of trilogy that opens with a whole lot of bad things happening, and while I am thoroughly hooked and will purchase the next volume as soon as it’s available, I wish Hodgson had found a way to end the book on a somewhat more positive or hopeful note. The middle of the book was great; the end was a bit of an emotional slog, alas. The writing is good enough here that I’m fairly sure the depression will be worth it, but if you need your endings to be triumphant (and who could blame you in this moment in history), you may want to wait on this one until more volumes are out.

Apart from that, though, this was a lot of fun. The Guardians felt like they came from a different strand of fantasy than you usually see in epic, more of a traditional folk tale vibe, which adds an intriguing twist to the epic fantasy setting. The characters all work, and Hodgson even pulls off some Game of Thrones–style twists that make you sympathetic to characters you previously hated. The magic system apart from the Guardians felt underbaked, but the politics had more depth than a lot of fantasy novels. If you want the truly complex and twisty politics you would get from one of Guy Gavriel Kay’s historical rewrites, you will come away disappointed, but it was good enough for me. And I did enjoy the Raven.

Respect, that’s all we demand. Recognition of our magnificence. Offerings. Love. Fear. Trembling awe. Worship. Shiny things. Blood sacrifice, some of us very much enjoy blood sacrifice. Truly, we ask for so little.

Followed by an as-yet untitled sequel that I hope will materialize.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Reviewed: 2025-11-02