The Raven Scholar (Eternal Path, #1) by Antonia Hodgson
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Black bisexual MC, bisexual love interest, queernorm setting
PoV: 'Third'-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 15th April 2025
ISBN: 0316577235
Goodreads

From an electrifying new voice in epic fantasy comes The Raven Scholar, a masterfully woven and playfully inventive tale of imperial intrigue, cutthroat competition, and one scholar’s quest to uncover the truth.

Let us fly now to the empire of Orrun, where after twenty-four years of peace, Bersun the Brusque must end his reign. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders compete to replace him. They are exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists—the best of the best.

Then one of them is murdered. We know who did it. We saw it happen. No one else did.

It falls to Neema Kraa, the emperor’s brilliant, idiosyncratic High Scholar, to find the killer before the trials end. To do so, she must untangle a web of deadly secrets that stretches back generations, all while competing against six warriors with their own dark histories and fierce ambitions. Neema believes she is alone. But we are here to help; all she has to do is let us in.

If she succeeds, she will win the throne. If she fails, death awaits her. But we won’t let that happen.

We are the Raven, and we are magnificent.

I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~a surprisingly pertinent chameleon
~badass war-fans
~hallucinogens ftw
~never eat a dragon’s lunch
~life-saving chickens

This book hit so hard it left me reeling. I was physically dizzy for hours after I finished it!

(The fact that I read almost the whole 800 pages in one go – with no breaks for eating or drinking – may have contributed, I admit. BUT ONLY PARTLY!)

The Raven Scholar is an incredibly impressive tapestry of subverted expectations. The moment when it becomes clear that this ISN’T written in third-person (even if it reads like it is)? GENIUS. And really, that moment should have given me a head’s up that I shouldn’t take anything about this book at face value; it should have warned me that so many things and people and events were going to prove not-what-they-seemed. Perhaps smarter readers will learn that lesson! But I did not, with the result that I was surprised over and over – even when I was sure I knew what was happening, I was wrong every single time. Hodgson kept me on my toes for all 800 pages, and I loved every second of it.

Even though I went in quite wary. I’m not a fan of tournament stories, and I’ve never cared about compete-for-the-throne plotlines (at least, not when the competing takes the form of a literal competition). I picked up Raven Scholar not because the pitch appealed to me, but because it was garnering so much praise in other corners that I figured, why not? So let me address some of the concerns other readers might have about the tournament and its set-up: first off, the competition? Is genuinely interesting. Besides duels between all the participants, competitors have to complete challenges set by each temple. These challenges are not the same from one tournament to the next, so no one knows what to expect each time – and none of the challenges are what I’d call conventional. One involves house-cleaning; another is subterranean; one involves dramatic performance on a stage. And for the most part, you can actually see how each challenge tests a necessary skill an Emperor ought to have. I can’t think of another tournament story where that’s the case.

The other aspect some readers might feel hesitant about is who is setting these challenges. Because the temples stand for – and attempt to embody the traits of – the Guardians, the eight animal gods (one of which is, of course, the Raven). The temples themselves are less of an issue than the fact that, in this society, everyone declares for a Guardian when they reach adulthood, making their choice based on their dominant personality traits. So someone who’s very scholarly might declare for Raven, while someone very proud might choose Tiger. Described like this, it might give you horror flashbacks to Divergent, but fear not!!! It really isn’t like that at all – for one thing, unless you gain a place in a temple, everyone lives mixed up together, not in separate districts or cities divided by which Guardian they follow. And in fact, by the end of the book, I felt that I understood what the purpose of this system – having each person declare for a Guardian – was, and more than that, I could see how it was meant to work, and the good it’s meant to do. We only see a tiny bit of the Empire in this book, so we don’t yet know the effect this system has on wider society, but what we did see impressed me. It. Looks like it might really work, actually???

(Even in the case of the villains, I would argue that it’s not that the system has encouraged their awfulness – it’s that these individuals have deliberately abandoned or ignored part of their Guardian’s precepts, in order to twist part of them. It’s fascinating!)

Divergent was about dividing people. Hodgson’s take is about knitting people together, even though it might not look it at first.

Which brings us back to: Raven Scholar delights in not being what it looks like. The first chapter reads like the opening of a coming-of-age adventure; it isn’t. (And prepare to be gutted by how much it isn’t.) From there, we timeskip to the tournament – except this really isn’t a tournament story, for all that the book uses that as a framework. Almost immediately, we have a murder – only when push comes to shove, this isn’t a murder mystery, either. Raven Scholar initially takes a very high-brow approach to its storytelling, but that’s almost certainly just to make sure you’re taken aback when Hodgson reveals her sly, glittering sense of humour (do not read after midnight, you will wake the household laughing your head off at least once). A story that starts with a fairly narrow view expands wider and wider as the book goes on. Truths that are established right away turn out to not be true at all, just as a number of lies and fantasies reveal themselves to be all-too-true,-actually. Every time you think you have a handle on what it is – on where the story is going – the tables are flipped as the ground drops out from under you.

(In the best way.)

So what is it, if it’s not a tournament or a murder mystery or any of those things?

A FREAKING DELIGHT, is what!

The baby began to cry, great heartbreaking sobs.

“Emotional manipulation,” said the Fox. “I respect that.”

As are the cast: I’m not sure if Neema is intentionally coded autistic, but she read that way to me, and I adored her for it. She is the bookish, socially inept grump of my dreams, and Neema, if Cain won’t marry you, I very much will! That she’s compelled to correct inaccuracies whenever she hears them, not in a sneering way but just because those facts are wrong…oh, be still my heart! Cain took a little longer to grow on me – our sort-of love interest, and the Fox contender for the throne – but grow on me he certainly did; he’s too ridiculously funny not to.

Cain had to admit, she looked hot. They both did. Rivenna was like an evil butterfly and Ruko was like a big, sexy wardrobe that might kill you, and these were both very much Cain’s type. Cain had a lot of types.

Every one of the secondary and tertiary characters wowed me; Hodgson is just so great at making everyone with a name feel so distinct and fleshed-out (even including several characters that didn’t have names, actually!) so that even I, who am infamously terrible at keeping track of who’s who, never got anyone mixed up! DO YOU KNOW HOW RARE THAT IS? With a cast this big, too?! That never happens!

Benna clutched her cheeks in joy. “You have a pet chameleon? Oh my short, sweet life–I LOVE chameleons!”

Neema suspected that Benna LOVED lots of things. “I think someone may have stolen him.”

“No!”

“But he may have wandered off somewhere.”

“Yes!” Benna much preferred this theory.

And our VILLAINS, argh! You love to hate them. They are fantastic. They are the best kind of villains, because they are smart, and that makes the stakes so much higher – many fantasy stories, it feels inevitable that the ‘good’ side will triumph, which makes it impossible to create and sustain tension…but Hodgson has made me genuinely worried that ‘Good’ won’t win here. The bad guys have thought of everything, and our ‘heroes’ have no advantages over them at all; they’re not stronger, richer, more magical, possessing more allies… How the hells are they supposed to save the day? I have absolutely no idea.

It’s so refreshing!

If I have to critique something, it’s that very occasionally we didn’t see A Thing happen, but only had it summarised for us after the fact. I think that happened…maybe twice? Which, in 800 pages, is EMINENTLY forgivable. And that’s…it. Everything else was simply perfect!

And this is Hodgson’s FIRST FANTASY??? Clearly, I’m going to need to keep a defibrillator handy while reading her books in the future: if this is how good she is NOW, she’s going to knock me dead as she gets more practice!

I can see how a lesser author could have made a mess of Raven Scholar; it could have been too busy, overcrowded, unable to delve properly into every aspect and thereby making itself shallow. This book is enormously ambitious; I can’t think of another that attempted so much so fast, that tried to be so many different things – at least, not without turning into a trainwreck. But Raven Scholar is no trainwreck; it is, in fact, that rarest of things, a book that outshines even its own potential. Hodgson accomplishes everything she tries to do here, and she does it brilliantly, grandiosely, with fireworks. This is a multi-faceted, pulse-pounding, breath-catching epic, one that grows more intensely impressive with every page turned.

It is, in a word, magnificent.

Under no circumstances can you miss it!

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