The Raven Tower is a strange and slowly paced fantasy, with two timelines building towards a climatic conclusion.

In one, Eolo, a soldier and aide, has to navigate the political turmoil surrounding the recent death of the ruler, titled The Raven's Lease. The Lease is divinely chosen, but lives only as long as actual bird inhabited by the god, at which point he must die. The prior Lease apparently did not do that, and the heir Mawak must find where duty and power lie, before the situation spirals out of control.

The second timeline is in the deep past, following the existence of a god named Strength and Patience of the Hills, as it learns to interact with neolithic humans and becomes embroiled in a war between gods. I was fascinated by the hints played out over the story, though how the gods worked, the abstraction of "power" and the way that their spoken phrases became true, was not quite weird enough for me. Still, beautifully written and plotted.