This is an impressive debut novel in terms of the wonderful prose and complex world-building details, but it didn't quite work for me.

This is a character driven tale told from two points of view, but with various lands, languages, gods, demigods, daemons, kings, lords, ladies, nymphs, and just generally more characters within the story than you can wave a stick at... for the majority of the book, I felt like I was just being bombarded with details.

I also didn't feel like I was given any space to get emotionally attached to the characters, even when they're impacted by another character's death. I especially felt frustrated with the relationship between Aedlynn and Diana, which didn't deliver on the build-up.

Is this a miss? Or is this a symptom of being the first book of a series? Time will tell!

That being said, if you're looking for high fantasy with inclusive characters, then you will probably enjoy this book.

Please note that this book has a cliffhanger ending, and that readers should be kind to themselves by paying attention to the Content Warnings stated at the start of the book.

*I received an advance reader copy via NetGalley, and I'm voluntarily leaving a review.*

A Curse of Crows by Lauren Dedroog is an immersive fantasy debut that introduces readers to a world filled with Gods, intricate politics, and ancient magic. The main story focuses on Diana, a young woman who has spent most of her life being taken care of by the High Lords Zale and Sorin. However, when a deadly sickness threatens to consume her, she strikes a desperate bargain with an unlikely ally, invoking a journey of vengeance and deceit.

The attention to detail is outstanding, from the expansive glossary to the unique language and folklore that enrich this universe, Lauren should definitely pat herself on the back for this. Not only is A Curse of Crows gorgeously written, but it also tackles themes of overcoming trauma, sacrifice, and revenge, adding depth and relatability to the story.

Dedroog’s writing shines with evocative descriptions that transport you directly into the heart of her world. Some passages are so beautifully crafted, making the magic of the world feel almost tangible. While the early pacing tries to juggle a lot of information alongside character introductions, the story truly finds its rhythm around the halfway mark, becoming much more immersive from that point on.
The multiple POV was great and I loved reading Aedlynn and Lorcan’s perspectives. However, I think that this section of the book would’ve made an incredible prequel which might have also allowed for more space to make the main plot even stronger and avoid any rush at the beginning.

The characters are a standout feature and Dedroog has created a cast that is not only likeable but also complex, making it easy to root for them! Lauren has written them in such a way that I feel a fierce protectiveness over them, particularly Diana. The banter and camaraderie add warmth and humour, making them feel relatable despite the high-stakes fantasy setting.

I did find that some character interactions felt a bit rushed. Certain relationships, especially with new characters, seemed to develop too quickly, relying more on "telling" rather than "showing" the progression of their relationships and loyalties. Despite this, the characters' personal journeys are compelling, and the romance is delicately woven into the plot, enhancing the story without overshadowing it.

Overall, A Curse of Crows is a strong debut that masterfully combines intricate worldbuilding, a unique magic system, and well-drawn characters. Although the beginning may feel a bit rushed, the novel finds its stride and delivers a high fantasy experience with the perfect mix of romance, political intrigue, and powerful female characters. If you're a fan of epic fantasy with a touch of the divine, this book is definitely worth picking up.

ACOC will never not be one of my favorite stories.

I read the first edition and now had the chance to read the revised edition. Honestly, go read this story now! I'm not a person with a wild visual imagination and Lauren is thus far the only author that makes me visible imagine certain scenes. For that alone the author has my endless respect.

Furthermore has Lauren been able to really bring alive some well-rounded characters with complicated relationships and feelings. The story truly comes to life in a big world with lots of different species, gods and sceneries.

I honestly cannot wait to see what Lauren does with the rest of the books in this series!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the review copy. This is a hard one to review and rate. There are elements I really liked, the rich world building and the complexity of the inhabitants within it. I overall liked Diana's storyline, and I liked almost all the characters in it. However, the flow of this book did not work for me. It was somewhat confusing - Diana's story is taking place with the present while Aedlynn's is taking place in the past. Her chapters are more sporadic and there are large time jumps between them. In my opinion, the chapters from Lorcan should have been removed, as they for me they just confused the narrative even more. The reason for this seems to be to allow Aedlynn to appear in Diana's present while explaining her back story, but I feel this could have been handled differently. It is already a complicated book to follow, with lots of names and terms that I frequently had to refer back to the glossary. I also found some of the narrative repetitive, for example the phase "There she is". I am also not sure why the book is called a curse of crows, since I cant remember any other mentions other than crow feathers which are part of the marking from the deal with one of the gods. I think the author has really great ideas overall, but it was the execution that did not work for me. I would still recommend that romantasy fans check it out.

Holy cow. This was one hell of a ride!

This has to be one of the best fantasy books I've read with such a substantial and planned out lore and world-building. No stone was left unturned in this fantastic book. This book just had everything: a rich lore, a myriad of brilliant characters, thoughtful world building, suspense, plot twists, romance and so much more. It is a book that you will simply not want to put down until you've uncovered all of its secrets.

There's just so much to this book; it isn't your run-of-the-mill fantasy book. It has elements of myth and history too, which I just think blended so well with the high fantasy.

I have been so excited about this book for a good while. It just sounded so fantastic and fantastical. It's the kind of book that reminds a person why they love this genre, and that is such a wonderful feeling.

Diana is the love of my life. She was my favourite character; she was so resilient, powerful, kind, funny and just an all-around gem of a person. Her backstory and storyline is just so damn fascinating; she goes through a lot in the span of 400 pages but comes out the other side even more wonderful than she was before.

Every character in this book undergoes some form of character development and it's so fantastic. As readers, we WANT to see the characters grow and evolve; we don't want them to be stuck being the same one-dimensional person for the entirety of a book. That's boring. And I think the development is one of the big reasons as to why this ACOC is so fantastic.

Another is the way the book is written; Lauren is a damn poet. It is so beautifully written; there are passages that are so evocative that you want to dive into the book and be in that scene. It is the epitome of 'just one more chapter'. I couldn't and wouldn't put it down; it had me in a chokehold. Finishing it was like coming up for air.

I've tried to be deliberately vague in this review because I don't want to spoil anything by just gushing about everything I love about this book (which is basically everything).

You will absolutely NOT be disappointed reading this book. It is everything that a fantasy book should be.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for an e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I really wanted to love this book - and there were parts of it I thoroughly enjoyed. But overall I was left feeling sort of confused, only mildly entertained and a bit disappointed.

It took way too long for me to get into. I don't know if this was a pacing issue, or the fact that there is just so much lore and all these different titles and deities and beings (plus this very long glossary at the beginning) that made things feel complicated and disjointed. I never fully warmed to the characters and found it hard to care about what anyone was doing for the first 50% of the book.

The plot feels very ambitious and grand, but something was just off for me. There is no doubt that Dedroog is a gifted writer with an absolutely incredible imagination, but I feel the execution needed more polish and some chapters could have had a heavier hand with the editing.

I'm delighted to see a sapphic romantasy being given a spotlight, and I'm sure the sequel will be great. I just think this wasn't exactly what I'd hoped it would be, and I had to push myself to finish it.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC!

I'm writing this review immediately after finishing this book, and truthfully I'm really not sure how I feel about it. I liked it, it wasn't bad. Some parts of it I adored, and some parts I really didn't. I'm trying a new format to my reviews, so I'll break it down into its parts.

Prose/Writing
The prose in this was.. odd. I didn't love it, I'll be honest. It was difficult to read at points and it felt clumsy - almost as if the author was trying to channel a book like Priory of the Orange Tree and not quite hitting the mark. As the story went on, I think it settled and became more natural, but the beginning was quite difficult to get through because of that. It wasn't difficult in the way that the classics are difficult, I've read a lot of them and didn't struggle too badly with the prose. It just felt unnatural? Also, it was very info-dumpy, especially in the beginning, with some pretty confusing head hopping going on.

Character
I do have some positive things to say about the characters. Again, in the beginning I didn't feel anything for them. Things moved so fast that I didn't really care about them, and I felt especially the first FMC we meet, her character was weirdly inconsistent. But as we entered the second half of the book, I found myself absolutely in love with the cast of characters that was introduced. All of them were fantastic, there was some amazing banter and all in all I really enjoyed reading about them.

Plot
I... enjoyed the plot? Again, the beginning was a real miss for me personally. It felt so rushed and disjointed, and I feel we really didn't get enough time to care what was happening. In my personal opinion, this book could really have done with starting at around the 50% mark and spending WAY more time fleshing that out, and then the first half of the book would have made a killer prequel, and would have (again) benefitted from being WAY more fleshed out. The redeeming thing for me is that the concept of the plot itself was VERY good. A real mishmash of a bunch of myth and legend that really appealed to me. I just wish it would have slowed down and taken its time a little more.

World
Now, the world itself is where this REALLY redeemed itself for me. The whole concept was fantastic, the magic was amazing. The folklore, all of it was brilliant. Again, if this was slower and it took its time it would have almost certainly been a 5 star read.

Conclusion
This book has so much promise. Queerness (always a plus in my book), interesting worldbuilding, compelling characters (in the second half), and WILD and interesting family dynamics. Whilst this wasn't my favourite, if there is a sequel at any point I will probably read it simply because I found the world itself so interesting, and I really hope the author will slow things down and give us time to love the characters before giving them stakes to come up against.

If you like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing and you're looking for something with a better plot and more in depth politics, I think you'll really enjoy this. It definitely has an audience, I just don't think that consisted of me. The author is really creative, and I look forward to seeing what they write next :)

I don't have words to describe how much I love this book. The story is intriguing and the worldbuilding so detailed. Every part of the world and story is well thought out and it's clear the book is a setup for an epic high fantasy series. Both Aedlynn and Diana have such captivating stories where we get to see them escape the influence of toxic males and grow so much stronger. There are several other characters I came to adore during my read, mostly Aestor, Sorin, and Nelle have my heart.
I finished this one in less than a day because I just couldn't put it down. The high stake moments were perfectly balanced out with some heartfelt moments of friendship and love. This book makes me want to be able to wipe my memories so I can read this book for the first time again. This review can not express how much I adore this book because it is really that good.

Unfortunately I did not finish this book at 30% in. I really wanted to like this book as it sounded great, but I did struggled with a few things.
The multiple pov at the beginning really threw me and I became quite confused with all the characters being introduced in such a short time frame.
The story felt very Throne of Glass coded and I just couldn’t vibe with any of the characters.
I wasn’t entirely sure where the story was going. I really wanted to try and push through, but I just couldn’t.
As much as the descriptions were beautiful, I just don’t think I got on with the writing style

This is a romantasy I was intrigued to read after seeing the rumblings of hype early on, but unfortunately proved to miss the mark for me.

Now don't get me wrong, I can see why this is being met with excitement. It's vaguely reminiscent of Throne of Glass in all the tropes much loved, with the likes of found family and fated mates drawing most romantasy folks in like a magnet.

But sadly, for me, this one fell short in the execution. It proved to be confusing and convoluted, a story trying to do far too much without enough explanation. I found myself reading dialogue multiple times, and got frustrated with the no-context perspective shifts that refused to allow this as an easy read. New characters are introduced and a few pages later are swearing loyalty to people they just met, and I found myself taking notes to try and wrap my head around how everyone knows each other. I don't even know why the title is what it is. I fear I missed something entirely. As a reader long familiar with complex worlds and the likes of dodgy relations in Game of Thrones (if you know, you know), it was jarring to struggle with this one. I wondered if it was me - and hey, maybe it is.

I do wish this was the hit it's set up to be, especially as a romantasy with LGBTQ+ rep and a promising premise that would be easily sold. But I have to admit this just didn't work for me sadly.

"I was not cruel by nature. But I was fucking vengeful and my wrath knew no limit."

Okay. Okay. Okay. I NEED MORE. I read the original 2022 version of this story, and I love to read the 2024 version and try and discover what changed. The pacing is better, and I am beyond excited and hyped to discover how certain events in book two will go down.

Also I feel like Aiden got even more lines in this version and he is my absolutely favourite character ever.

Now for what makes this story tick. Its been a whole while since I read romantasy, mostly going for small town romance lately. But the fact that I finished this book in just a few days (thank you vacation job for letting me read at my desk) says so much about the quality of this story. It reads so easy, but in the meantime you do get a complete and complex image of the world ACOC takes place in. I love Diana and feel for her journey and self discovery. I am so excited to see what else will happen with her.


(Thanks to Netgalley and Golancz for providing me with an ARC!)

3.25 stars

A Curse of Crows was one of my most anticipated book releases of the year, since it is a sapphic romanatsy which can be hard to find. Unfortunately although there were some good aspects there is also a lot I would change.
I did like the sapphic romance and their love for each other was very believable, even though it sometimes felt a bit rushed to the reader. I also enjoyed learning more about the world and the magic system, and the writing style was very easy to read.
Unfortunately from around 60% I started to lose interest, I think this was partly because there was now only one pov, Diana's, when before there was also the pov of Aedlynn as well as other characters. I think having the pov from other characters helped make the story more interesting. I also felt that the author told the reader about the bond between Aedlynn and Diana but it never felt very believable.
Overall the story was ok, but I felt that it had the potential to be a lot better, I'm not sure if I'll continue with the series.

Thank you Netgalley for this free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review. Sadly, this book wasn't for me, and I DNFd at 25%. I liked the concept and I thought it was generally well written, but the sheer volume of information and characters thrown at the reader was overwhelming and took me out of the story.
I did like the sapphic representation and fearless love scene in Chapter 6. I enjoyed the relationship between the two characters. I think this book would be perfect for readers looking for a complex, adult, sapphic version of Throne of Glass, so if that's you, give it a go.

Diana and Aedlynn’s journey is a breathtaking blend of divine intrigue, fierce vengeance, and unexpected love. The way their lives intertwine amidst a world of gods and mortals is nothing short of magical. The tension, the passion, and the raw emotion in every twist and turn left me completely captivated. This book isn’t just a story, it’s an exhilarating ride through a fantastical realm where love and power collide in the most thrilling ways. Absolutely unmissable. I can’t wait to read more!

I was sent a copy of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.....for a full review please see my Amazon and Goodreads accounts

Well this was just great. An excellent story, brilliant world-building and really interesting characters. I found myself thinking about it often and looking forward to picking it back up every time I had the chance. Cannot wait to read the follow up!

What an amazing rollercoaster of emotions this book took me on
First fantasy isn’t my usual genre but this. Blew my mind!!
The characters was insane it was so magical to read I was so engrossed I really didn’t want to put it down !!!
I still don’t really have words to say how much I loved this and to find out it’s Lauren debut wow just wow !!!
The world building was perfect I could picture everything it was so beautifully magical
The ending!! I need book 2 like right now please !!
An amazing book I won’t stop thinking about