The Merciful Crow by Margaret OwenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I first heard about Margaret Owen as an artist - more specifically, for her creations of the first official art of L.L. McKinney's Alice, and also one "whoops my hand slipped - A WHOLE BUNCH" sketch of Leia strangling Jabba the Hutt. Now, of course, she's got a book that's pretty well a work of art in and of itself, purely on the strength of its fantasy world-building. Comparable to Leigh Bardugo in its Russian-esque second-world style, The Merciful Crow is set in a world with no less than eleven different castes, all based on birds, all with different magical Birthrights - and while the plague-doctor Crows are the outcastes of this world, it's not the top-level Phoenixes you have to watch out for. It's the Swans, with their Birthright of Desire. It really doesn't get more clear a metaphor for the real world's race and class issues than this, and Owen's got me in for at least one more book - next year's The Faithless Hawk, for which I'm hoping it will not be another duology conclusion. This series is too well-developed for just two books!
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