Mark of the Raven (The Ravenwood Saga #1)

Synopsis

Lady Selene is heir to the House of Ravenwood and the secret family gift of dreamwalking. As a dreamwalker, she can enter a person's dreams and manipulate their greatest fears or desires. Soon after the gifting, however, Selene discovers that the Ravenwood women have been secretly using their gift to gather information or to assassinate those responsible for the fall of House Ravenwood to the Dominia Empire hundreds of years ago.

As she becomes more entrenched in Ravenwood's dark past, Selene longs to find out the true reason behind her family's gift, believing that its original intent could not have been for such evil purposes, but she is torn about upholding her family's legacy-- a legacy that supports her people. Selene's dilemma comes to a head when she is tasked with assassinating the one man who can bring peace to the nations-- but who is also prophesied to bring about the downfall of her own house.

One path holds glory and power and will solidify her position as Lady of Ravenwood. The other path holds shame and likely death. Which will she choose? And is she willing to pay the price for the path chosen?

Loved

• Dreamwalking. So this is a thing. The Ravenwood women can walk inside people's dreams and assassinate people using their nightmares and fears against them- what?? So crazy! This power was so creative and unique from other powers in other fantasy worlds. Watching Selene learn about this power and how to use it was so interesting, but also painful as she realizes that this power has been used for dark purposes for generations in her family.

• Damien. This guy is just good. So good that his soul is literally full of light, as Selene discovers. He is kind, unassuming, non-judgmental and selfless. He makes choices in this book and throughout the series that require so much sacrifice, but he doesn't think twice about it. I love just beginning to discover Damien's strength and goodness in this first book.

• The ending! I won't spoil, but the ending of this story blew. my. mind. To be honest, I wasn't completely sold on this book until the last few chapters, and then I was shamelessly hooked after certain plot twists happened. This book definitely ends on an unexpected cliffhanger that had me stalking the mailman for the next book in the series to arrive.

• The world. The world building in this series is solid- detailed history, unique customs, different cultures, and political intrigue. I like the idea of the Seven Great Houses who have all been given different gifts to use in protection of their people. I liked the council that takes place in this book and seeing all the different Houses interact with their weighted histories and grudges against each other.

Didn't Love

• Honestly this book was a little rough for me through about the first half, just because it felt so dark. Selene's life was so sad and she was so determined to put her emotions away that she felt very distant and frustrating. But, as I said above, the last few chapters totally changed everything about this book for me and I was head over heels by the end.

Content

• Language: 
• No language.

• Sexual content: 
• References to affairs.

• Violence:
• Selene walks in dreams and sees nightmares of various characters, some of which are very disturbing:
• One character remembers her father dying by having a wolf rip his throat.
• One character remembers watching his family die as his house burns down and he is unable to save them.
• Selene watches a character being raped in a dream. Selene refers to seeing her legs with a man's behind a tree, and she can tell she is being raped. In this same scene, others are being ravaged and killed. The trauma of reliving this dream shatters the character's mind and she becomes basically a vegetable after this.
• Many references to killing through dream walking and being hired to assassinate this way.
• Two characters are murdered through dreamwalking at the council, but nothing is described.
• One character has the ability to move water. In two instances, he raises a water wall and people die because of it. From one of the instances, the character frequently remembers a man who had been impaled by wood and feels immense guilt and regret that he caused this, though he did it to save his people.


• Religious Themes: 
• The main character's family worships "The Dark Lady," who is basically an evil goddess. She represents the devil, and the Light in this story represents God. In this book, worship services happen where the Dark Lady is summoned on certain days of the month. It is definitely creepy and dark, but sets the stage for the Light, which becomes a major theme in the other two books.

Overall Thoughts

As I said above, I didn't enjoy the first half of this book because it felt so dark, and Selene was forced to be so cold and guarded. I was frustrated with her for the decisions she was making and for stuffing her emotions away, even though she had good intentions. But by the end I respected her and began to see her potential and who she was under the cold mask she had been forced to wear. The last few chapters of this book changed everything and I was totally hooked after some plot twists at the end. I ended up loving this whole series and I'm so glad I stuck with it. Although this wasn't my favorite of the series because it was a little dark, it's totally worth reading to get to the other two books.