The Queen of Crows

Getting old is more than marking days off on a calendar. It is a state of mind. Age can happen over many years with slow growth, tremulously, and wobbly marching towards adulthood and old age. Or age can occur in an instant. It is marked by one moment, a precipice that you are thrown off of never to be the same. Heloise started this series as a child, naive, young and untested. Not any more. Heloise is an old soul now - battle-scarred, hardened, and worldly. In a way, her forced toughness is a little death. The death of who Heloise could have been. She could have been someone's wife, a mother, and a partner. Maybe Heloise can be those things in the future. If she can survive the coming events. She has already lost pieces of herself, more than the physical (an arm, and now an eye.) Maybe those are things that she no longer wants.

We have a lot of maybes at the end of book two.

What I can tell you is that this book is nearly as good as the first one. (please see my glowing review here) I said that Heloise is the hero that we need now. It still holds I think Heloise is the hero that this story needs and the hero that we, as a society, need to read. We need strong female characters that are not written into the corner of false insusceptibility. The vulnerability can be a strength if one can conquer it. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the power to overcome weakness and terror to do what needs to be done. Heloise does that. Cole has written a female character outside of the archetypes. Authors either write female warrior characters as fearless and invulnerable, which is false and frankly lazy. Or they write them as needy. They need to be saved, and usually, that is by some hunky and strong man. Heloise is neither. She is vulnerable, and the epitome of strength all rolled into an iron machine set to save and free her people. Heloise needs to be protected by no one, not her parents or the traveling people. This is her duty, and she understands what fear is. But fear will not conquer her.

The insane thing is that Cole is doing this inside of 250 pages.

“Getting old's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But it's taught me that...that life is like being a mouse caught in a river current. So much of living is simply trying to keep from going under long enough to ride the water to its end.”

The story starts right as we left off from the first book. Heloise is in the thick of things. The first novel of the series, The Armoured Saint, is about Heloise shedding her childhood. While the second, Queen of Crows, is about her accepting the mantle of leadership and what that means. Interestingly, Cole gives us a new character group called the Traveling People. They are the antithesis of the villagers, both in religion and personality. This opens up the story to ingrained prejudices on both sides and how that plays out when put into hairy situations where one must rely on the other for survival. One thing they do have in common is an enemy in The Order. Even the names that Cole chose are clever. The order: a group is adhering to an orderly and systematic belief structure. The Traveling People: wild and free unbound by rigidity. The Villagers: a group right in the middle, ordinary people. These names reinforce the worldbuilding that Cole does and helps create those identities in the three groups.
I say that this is almost as good as the first one. This was a close thing 4.5 stars instead of 5. Some of the turns in the plot felt a little shaky to me. Especially those with the traveling people and I won't go into specifics, because why ruin it.

The Queen of Crows is an incredible book. Dark and grim, but with the occasional glimmer of hope amongst the pain. This story is Grimdark done right. I can not wait to read the next one; if it is anything like the previous two, then I am in for a wild ride. The final book in this series comes out on November 12th. Get to reading, so you are ready for it.

Executive Summary: This book finished a lot stronger than it started for me, but I struggled to finish it quickly despite its short length. 3.5 stars.

Full Review
I really like Myke Cole. I've liked him ever since he did an interview with Sword & Laser in 2013. I follow him on twitter. I really want to support his work.

I've actually listened to 4 of his books and thought most were just ok. When this series was announced I thought it'd be more of my liking, because it's more traditional fantasy and not the modern military fantasy of his previous work.

I still find myself struggling with these books at times. Both have finished much stronger than they start. Both are really well written. I'd say the easily the best books his written to date in terms of the quality of his prose, etc.

I used to read a lot of dark fantasy, but these days the appeal of that has dwindled to almost nothing. The world is dark enough most days, I'm not sure I need to spend my free time reading about horrible things happening to fictitious characters.

I like Heloise. I like the concept of the powered armor, and magic that summons demons if used too much/incorrectly. I don't like all the horrible people being horrible to each other almost nonstop. There are moments where you can catch your breath a little, but they are short lived.

Despite its short length, this book took me a month to read. There were days when I could read, and simply chose not to. Things really picked towards the end however and I finished the end in only a few days.

I like the direction this book took things, and I'm curious to see where it goes from here, but I may wait until I'm in the right mood to pick it up rather than getting it on release day.