I listened to the audiobook for The Crimson Queen, book one of Alec Hutson’s The Raveling, back when it was a finalist in the first SPFBO in 2018. At the time, I was blown away by the breadth of worldbuilding and the luscious prose, and was ready for book two, The Silver Sorceress.
The narrator, however, had different ideas, and by the time The Silver Sorceress came out on audiobook, Mount TBR (or TBL, as the case may be) had grown.
Four years passed before I decided to pick up where I’d left off… and quickly burned through The Silver Sorceress and the series finale, The Shadow King. Like The Crimson Queen, the two stories deliver textured worldbuilding and unparalleled wordsmithing in spades. They were those rare audiobooks where I made time to listen, instead of just following along during my commute.
The worldbuilding is magnificent, with a tapestry of interwoven histories among many clashing cultures, all delivered organically (like Whole Foods, before Amazon took over) without the need of massive info-dumps. The world feels lived in and real, with a longstanding lore that goes back thousands upon thousands of years, with non-human civilizations going through cycles of growth and destruction before the current time.
The prose is vivid and evocative. Hutson always has the exact perfect word for every occasion, weaving image and emotion. It’s as if he memorized an SAT prep guide (for non-US readers, this is the standardized test we must suffer through to apply for college) but chose only the words the average reader knows. Everything is beautifully crafted from the sentence to the paragraph to the chapter level.
These two storytelling elements lead to an immersive adventure told through the eyes of several characters. Keilan is the primary, a fisherman’s son with deep magical gifts, growing up in a place governed by a theocracy bent on stamping out magic. Book two introduces us to Cho Lin, the daughter of a demon slaying family who must take up the mantle when her invalid brother cannot after their father dies. They are joined by a rogue’s gallery of nefarious and noble people, some very memorable, and others just a footnote.
To be honest, I only felt invested in Cho Lin, and what I realized during book three is The Raveling is a more plot-driven story. The narrative distance tends not to go in close; but I presume this is a deliberate trade-off, because it allows Hutson’s classically epic narrative voice to come through. It works well, since the plot is broad in scope; one side point in book one leads to a larger story for the series.
As a whole, The Raveling has the feel of classic epic fantasy with rich magic and dark undertones. With the worldbuilding and prose, I rate it 9 stars out of 10.
T. O. Munro
Julia Kitvaria Sarene