Very rarely does a fantasy novel manage to take you into its world from the first page and refuse to let you go until the ending. More often than not, stories in a series get you hooked into its magical world, then leave you hanging as you breathlessly await the next installment. Not so with Kate Forsyth's THE TOWER OF THE RAVENS. For those who have never visited her world of Eileanan in books such as THE POOL OF TWO MOONS or THE CURSED TOWERS, never fear! THE TOWER OF THE RAVENS is a fantasy epic that can definitely stand alone, and does so with competent writing, fantastic world-building, and a deeply heroic cast of characters.

Ever since she was a young girl, Rhiannon has wanted nothing more than to catch a winged horse, to tame and train it so that she could fly away and escape from the hellish nightmare that is her life. Scorned, ridiculed, and even feared by her fellow man, Rhiannon lives in near solitude, wanting only to belong. Without even a name at this young age, the daughter of One-Horn and a human father. One-Horn is the mother of the tribe of satyricon, fairies who have horns and hoofs instead of feet. Rhiannon, born without a horn and with human feet, is immediately branded an outcast, and she lives her solitary life with only the hope of escape as comfort.

When she finally manages to escape upon a winged horse, its not without injury and risk to herself. Arriving at the home of Lewen, an apprentice witch, she's finally given a name-and perhaps a chance to truly belong. When Lewen and his family decide to bring Rhiannon to the Tower of Two Moons in the city of Lucescere to be tested for magical ability, Rhiannon worries that she might once again lose any sense of self she's just beginning to gain.

Murder, intrigue, and suspicion soon surround Rhiannon when a member of the Guard is found dead. Suddenly surrounded by unimaginable evil and malevolence, it will take all the strength and magic that Rhiannon possesses to protect herself and those she loves.

THE TOWER OF RAVENS is a wonderful fantasy novel that will thoroughly immerse you in Kate Forsyth's magical world. A woman who wants only to find her place in the world, Rhiannon is a strong, caring woman who truly overcomes her past to be a woman that everyone can be proud of. ( )

The accent in the text, the bloody accents! It was annoying and made me re-read many time to make sense of it. I would have likes more this three books without THAT! ( )

Apparently I stumbled into the first book of the next series after Forsyth’s Witches of Eileanan books, which I have not read. However, that did not affect my ability to ‘get’ this book. There is a full glossary in the back and anything that happened before this story begins was explained as much as it had to be – I was not lost.

I was expecting one of those, what I call – Girly Fantasy books. You know the kind. A soft, kind of spiritual heroine who spends most of the story tripping around the forest, dosing everyone with feverfew and comfrey and communing with a pantheon of Celtic-type goddesses before meeting the love interest. This does not describe Rhiannon – a half-human, half satyricorn girl who flees from her herd (read ‘family’) on a horned and winged black horse. I was not sure what, exactly, a satyricorn was. The glossary defines them as being “a race of fierce horned faeries” and they are certainly that, the full-blooded ones having horns and upwards of six breasts (just the women). They are also very bloodthirsty creatures. Indeed, this book is populated with a wide variety of faeries of quite diverse types and none of them could be described as Tinkerbell. A number of them are formidable creatures – even the small ones - and they are beings that you don’t really want to screw around with.

Rhiannon (known only as No-Horn at the beginning of the book) flees from her herd; she fears they will turn on her because she is hornless and weak in comparison to the rest. She isn’t really very weak though for while still with her herd she kills a human man with her bow and arrow. The herd, which is mostly made up of females, often takes men captive in order to mate with them, but this male, a messenger of the king, forces the issue by trying to escape and Rhiannon has to kill him in order to prove herself to the herd and win some time for herself. Afterward she wastes no time in capturing and then and tying herself onto the winged black horse. She then flies out of the satyricorns’ territory and into the wider world. She ends up in the company of witches and soon finds herself on her way to the capitol of Eileanan in order to attend kind of a young witches’ university.

At this point, as Rhiannon and the mixed group of young witches set out in the company of a husband and wife jongleurs, I was a little afraid that the story was going to go girly on me, but it didn’t. Rhiannon is dangerous and angry and severely out of place with these people. She is non-cooperative. She does not get much of what they talk about; indeed the language she speaks is almost a pidgin-language. She is attracted to Lewen, one of the students, but doesn’t go all mushy on us. I liked her very much.

The balance of the book is taken up with the journey to the capitol and the trouble they have getting there. In the interests of saving time, Iven, one of the jongleurs, is anxious to get there in order to inform the king of the death of his messenger (the man Rhainnon killed) and so they travel through a part of the realm where things have gone very bad. There are rumors of ghosts, zombies and missing children, but they go that way anyway. Time is of the essence. As they travel, Rhiannon is anxious to keep her guilty secret from these people for she has come to like them.

O.K. That’s as much as I’m going to tell you.

For me the story held up through ‘til the end and I look forward to reading the next book in the series. And the Witches of Eileanan series. In a world of what seems like hundreds of less than mediocre fantasy novels, The Tower of Ravens was a very pleasant discovery. Forsyth has just been elevated to number 4 on my tiny list of excellent fantasy writers where she joins Martin, Flewelling and Hobb. Maybe she’ll go a little higher. ( )