The Raven's Eye Runaways

The Raven’s Eye Runaways is a brilliant book by Claire Mabey. It threads together creative worldbuilding and compelling characters to create a story full of mystery and intrigue. It focuses on two characters, Getwin, an apprentice bookbinder, and Lea, a scribe, who embark on a quest to save Getwin’s mother from the evil Scholars and the Stationers guild. This book was a pretty good read and I would definitely recommend it to younger readers.

Getwin has lived in the Raven’s Eye bookbindery with her mother for her entire life and works binding books for the Stationers Guild. But when her mother Gunnora is taken by the guild, Getwin discovers a plethora of magical secrets about her mother’s past. She embarks on a quest to save her, and discover more about her mother’s past.

The details of Lea’s past are less clear. At the beginning of the book she is trapped working for the Stationers Guild as a scribe copying books. She soon manages to escape however and meets Getwin. They quickly become allies and begin to search for Gunnora with the help of The Book of Greene, a magical artefact Lea stole from the Stationers Guild.

This book had a lot of things I liked about it, including the mechanics of the magic system, which was interesting. I particularly liked the concept of rule books which are key to this world. The way magic is connected to nature is cool even if it’s a bit stereotypical. The Book of Greene was a particularly cool object, its inner mechanics were really cool. I really liked this magic system and always felt compelled to know more about its deeper workings.

This was mitigated slightly however as at no point in the book was there a concrete explanation to how the magic system and the world in general worked. Occasionally you’d get a tidbit or tiny explanation of something but it wasn’t enough for me and really irritated me while reading this book.

On a brighter note, I really liked the characters of this book. My favorite was probably Lea but I liked them all. I felt her character was really interesting and the suffering she goes through makes her character more believable. Additionally what we know of her past is very cool and as well as her emerging magic this makes her character really stick for me.

I really liked the way this book explored the amazing world created by Claire Mabey. I feel this book managed to take me through so many different parts of this world. I love how all the different places linked together and weaved into the story giving off this vibe of wonder. I also liked how it managed to touch on topics like deforestation even in this fantasy world.

Overall this was a pretty good book that I enjoyed reading for the most part. There were one or two things that I didn’t like but I think this is down to the fact that this book is probably intended for readers younger than me. I feel if I had read this two or three years ago I would have felt differently about these details. Overall it was a great book and I would highly recommend it to plenty of readers.