The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen
Honestly, I picked this book because I’m a sucker for corvids. Anything related to crows or ravens automatically gets my attention. A fantasy novel in which people are divided into castes based on birds? Wow, it’s like it was written just for me.
Owen seems to have based her crow caste based on photos of people carrying off plague victims wearing crow masks, because the “crows” in this book have masks like that and also have a place in society where they carry off victims of the “sinner’s plague.” Castes in this society also have witches who are able to use their caste’s power. Peacock witches have the power of illusion, hawks can heal or harm, swans can cause desire, sparrows can hide, pigeons have luck and crows have the ability to steal the power of the dead, if they have the bones or teeth of another. This is so ghoulish and cool that I just loved learning about the worldbuilding.
I’m not gonna tell you the plot, because you’ve read that already, but I’ll point out two more cool things about this novel. One is the language. Owen uses archaic but still comprehensible linguistic tricks to set the mood. One is Fie’s name, “fie” as in an expression of disgust. The crows all have names, such as “Wretch”, “Cur”, “Hangdog”, “Pissabed” or other names that you’d call someone you don’t like. Also, Owen uses adjectives as adverbs, which many Americans still do with occasional words but British speakers do not. I think it works real well. She also uses “aye” as “yes” and “ken” in the old term meaning “to know or understand” and a few other anachronisms that definitely gave the vibe that this was a foreign land.
But why create a fantasy land populated with the same homophobic patriarchy that we have to deal with every day? This land is plenty cruel enough, but women can hold ranks, characters are openly gay or bi, and there’s even a gender-neutral character without that being the whole point of the story. And did I mention that the main characters aren’t white? I for one relish this kind of inclusion. It’s a fresh polish so often lacking in cookie-cutter mcfantasyland stories. The voicing on the audiobook was only so so (I didn’t care for how the narrator did male voices) but it didn’t ruin the story for me.
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