The City of Ravens: A Book Review

I finished this book on my lunch hour at work today and immediately started another novel. As has become a habit, I'm writing a review of the novel. The City of Ravens is a Forgotten Realms novel by Richard Baker, one of my favourite authors from that shared world (his The Last Mythal trilogy is fantastic to read). The book is set in the city of Raven's Bluff, which is a city noted for its high population of resident adventurers. The book focuses on the actions of a sorcerous thief (he'd prefer the term rogue I'm sure) by the name of Jack Ravenwild.

Jack is a very well written character, he is both clever, resourceful, sneaky and a bare-faced liar. He also has a habit of biting off more than he can chew, as this book details. He manages to get himself involved in something like a half dozen plots at the same time, I'll list them:

1. He bungles a burglary on a rich merchants house, getting away though with 1 of the 5 rubies he intended to snare. As a result he has a pair of "property retrieval experts" after him to recover the looted item.
2. He is hired by beautiful and mysterious lady warrior Elana to recover a book for her, named The Sarkonagael: Secrets of the Shadewrights. In his efforts to secure the book for her, he incurs the wrath of Iphegor the Black, a necromancer who he steals it from.
3. He overhears a wizardess trying to deduce the location of a legendary lost tomb, said to be stuffed with treasures, and takes it upon himself to beat her to the place... just as soon as he's figured out where it is.
4. In an assumed guise as Landsgrave Jaer Kell Wildhame he is wooing the Lady Illyth Fleetwood, who gets him to be her partner in the Game of Masks, a series of Masquerade Balls, one held every 3 or 4 nights, with an ongoing riddle puzzle (which is extremely complex!) for the attendees to solve.
5. The Knights of the Hawk (the cities elite police force) are after him on suspicion of dealing with the agents of the Warlord Myrkyssa Jelan (who attacked the city a couple years previous), and he is thus wanted for possible treason.

See what I mean? This is a man with a lot on his mind. To the writers credit, he juggles all of these subplots (and some more besides) with great skill, ensuring that Jack is always on his toes, ducking and diving. He portrays a man who lives on his wits and cunning very well, and this is the most fun book I've read in a long time as a result. If anyone wants to play a Rogue in D&D, I would heartily reccomend they read this book, because Jack is the best written example of that class I can think of.

There is some great humour in here too. Jack is a funny character, and the whole section where he infiltrates Iphegor's tower to steal The Sarkonagael, and has to deal with the necromancers mouse familiar is priceless, worth buying the book for that chapter alone. This book definately gets 5/5 from me, along with the hope that Mr. Baker will write another novel featuring this amazing character.