Black Wings Beating

This highly-anticipated young adult fantasy was - alright. I'm a little disappointed, actually. I love birds. I grew up with a number of parrots, and crows are still one of my favorite animals. So a book where falconry is a central part of the culture, and they have to go hunt down a mythical bird? Count me in! Unfortunately this book suffers from the “reluctant hero” trope, which is far too common in YA and gets tiring.

The two main characters in this book are twins. We have Brysen, who was never good enough for their alcoholic father, and was beaten regularly. He's also stubborn, irresponsible, and reckless. His sister has an ancient power to control falcons, but she refuses to learn how to control it because she doesn't want to overshadow her good-for-nothing brother. (She also might be asexual, but it's not explicitly stated in the book. It's heavily implied, though.)

The two dysfunctional siblings set out to capture the near-mythical bird that killed their father, in order to save the life of Brysen's lover, falconry trainer, and manipulator, Dymian. They're joined by Nyall, a boy in love with Kylee who doesn't care that she doesn't love him back. (In the truly-good-guy way, not in the creepy way. I like Nyall. He's good people.)

They of course run into dangers in the mountains that the bird lives in, and the book is about that journey. Interspersed with their story is the occasional scene of the invaders sweeping across the land elsewhere. I wish we had a better sense of time - both how long before the invaders near the Six Villages where Brysen and Kylee are, and how long their journey in the mountains takes. That could have been much better communicated.

Kylee frustrates me - she could be so amazing, and if she'd use her powers, it could get her what she wants. She's trying to earn enough money catching and selling birds of prey to get out of the business entirely. (She has to pay off their father's debts first.) So why not use her powers to call down a few of the most valuable birds and BE DONE WITH IT? How does this not occur to her? As far as I can tell, the only real reason she doesn't want to be a falconer is she knows she'd be excellent at it and she doesn't want to overshadow her brother, whose dream it's been to be a great falconer. News flash. Your brother is worthless, girl. If he wants to be great maybe he should buckle down and focus instead of blaming those around him for his misfortunes.

So I'm not sure what my overall opinion of this book is. The world-building is shaping up to be interesting, but needs more fleshing out. The writing itself is pretty good, it flows nicely but needs a better sense of time. The characters' motivations are clear but occasionally frustrating. I am a little invested in seeing what happens in the next book, but I'm not sure I'm invested enough to spend the time to read it. I'll make that decision when it comes out, I suppose.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I was really not feeling this one. The descriptions of falconry sounded horrible, veering into animal cruelty. It was immediately off putting that our introduction to the main characters was while taking their tethered bird to compete in a fighting pit. I thought I'd give it more of a chance, maybe there'd be a redemption arc involving releasing the captured birds at some point? The twin's mother spends the book telling them to release the birds, because she believes that what they're doing is wrong. But they just treat her like she's in some kind of bird liberation cult and everyone else goes on their merry way capturing, fighting, racing, hunting or whatever the heck else you do with birds. Anyway, the actual plot is about hunting down a giant telepathic eagle, that for some unexplained reason is the key to winning a war.

Also, all of the bird metaphors got really old real fast.

And the audiobook narrator did these really insane bird caws, which made me think whole sentences must have been written like “Caw caw caw caw caw SCREECH.”

This one was difficult to rate. I liked the story, but I did not like one of the main characters. Brysen is a whiny dumbass. I would have given this a higher rating if I liked him. His character took away from the story because of how irritating his decisions were.
I switched back and forth between the audiobook and physical copy for this one. I also did not care for the male narrator. The female narrator was alright though.
Overall, the story itself was interesting enough that I will read the next one. I just hope there's more Kylee and less Brysen. I really liked her character.

I picked this book up mostly on a whim and because the cover looked intriguing and someone at the bookstore had left a little blurb saying it was queer (which I absolutely loved how matter of fact the queerness was, I appreciate a good story about queerness prevailing in the face of odds like Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda, but I also just want more normal representation showing queer people just being people and respected as such and this book did an amazing job of that!). It sat on my shelf for two years which is really a shame because I devoured it in 3 days and it's quickly become one of my favorite reads of the year.

Don't let the mixed reviews keep you from reading it (I was at first nervous because there were some less than enthusiastic reviews, but I think that mostly comes down to taste).

I would recommend this for people who enjoy casual queer representation, accurate sibling relationships (boy did Kylee's sense of protecting her brother resonate with me as an older sister myself), and a refreshing new fantasy world (seriously I would love to have a Lonely Planet guide for this world it's so cool and I can't wait for it to be unpacked more in the sequels!)

Hope you enjoy this book as much as I did! (or don't that's really up to you