#rootshoot

[hairstudio168-blog]

Before and after..By Laddi! #Highlift #Highlights #KolestonPerfact #LowLights #ShortLayers #Wella #RootShoot (at Hair Studio 168)

[ambagelbraindump]

Book Review #4: Ravenwood

Synopsis:

14 year old Ark Malikum lives a simple life at the lowest rungs of his tree-dwelling society, until one day during a routine plumbing job, he overhears a plot to overthrow the king. His life is then turned upside down, as he escapes danger after danger in his attempt to warn stop the forces of evil from taking over his beloved forest home. His journey takes him through parts of Arboreum he never thought he’d see, and even beyond to the dark corners of the Ravenwood; along the way he acquires a menagerie of friends (and enemies), all of whom must come together in final bloody battle for the fate of Arboreum and all the people who call it home.

General thoughts

Like just about every other book I’ve read so far, I wasn’t really into this one at first, but by the end I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was invested enough to read the sequel.

Something I absolutely loved about this book was the worldbuilding. There were definitely points that were pretty cheesy (see: dendran swear words) but I thought it was extremely creative, and it was fascinating to see how all the different parts of this world fit together. Basically these people called “dendrans” live in giant, semi-sentient trees, where they’ve built entire cities and infrastructure to support their lifestyles (and also to protect themselves from the ravens, which evidently are gigantic and shark-like as they’re attracted to the smell of blood). I really liked that certain aspects of worldbuilding were addressed that normally get overlooked (see: plumbing, waste removal, farming, water supply, etc), and that every part of their society is uniquely adapted to their way of living.

In terms of the plot, I found it to be pleasantly dark but not too much- Ark and his friends are pretty cheerful people and are always cracking jokes at the worst times, although there were a few moments where things got a bit gorey (but nothing will be quite as bad as the Young Wizards book I picked up a while ago… it’s been like 6 months and I’m STILL traumatized by the fact that they asked a 12 year old to sacrifice herself for ‘the good of the world’). Ravenwood has a lot of really lovable characters, and the villains all felt well-rounded and motivated in very interesting ways. Especially my dude Petronio- he wasn’t initially a really evil guy, he just desperately wanted his father’s approval, and that turned him into one heck of a villain. Petronio’s arc also made my writer’s brain very happy- the vast majority of his decisions were not good ones, and he was CONSTANTLY going against what he was told to do/what would be the best for the situation.

One fun thing I almost forgot about: there’s a group of underground people called the “rootshooters” that were an absolute delight to read- and even more so because I’m currently knees-deep in the second season of Critical Role, so whenever they said anything ever (they had some real funky accents going on) I couldn’t not read it in Matt Mercer’s voice.

Things I didn’t like about this book: again, some of the world building and language was a bit over the top…if you change every other word to be something tree-related, it gets a bit stale after a while. I was also left with a major plot question at the end that I feel like wasn’t addressed: a big part of this story is that the king is getting old and soft and his people are suffering without him doing a thing about it, so there’s a coup to overthrow him which (spoilers) is not successful. This is great for the main characters, obviously, but… what happens when this dude dies of old age? There was no mention of him having any children to take the throne after him, so I guess Ark and his friends will have to go through all this nonsense AGAIN in like 20 years when the king finally croaks for good.

My fingers are starting to hurt so I’m going to wrap this up, but here’s a sampling of some of my favorite funky dendran words/slang:

“Treenager”

“Squitty” (this one was used a LOT)

“Be-leaf”

“Flipping fungus”

“Dell” (in place of hell)

“Buddy Holly” (also used frequently)

“Barkingham Palace”

“King Quercus” (Quercus is the genus name for oak trees… I don’t think this book was meant for wildlife majors who have taken multiple plant ID classes)

Rating

Ravenwood gets a 6/10 from me: I loved the worldbuilding and the characters and enjoyed the plot enough to want to read the next book (which usually doesn’t happen). Some of the attempts to play with language threw me off as well as some cheesy worldbuilding, along with some unanswered plot questions; but overall I really enjoyed this book, and look forward to reading Forest of Glass as soon as I get a chance!