There's something nice about knowing the beats of a genre. The Merciful Crow plays on beat the majority of the book. You have the strong, angry, wronged young woman, her loyal lover, a society that treats her and her people as outcasts, rising up and finding their power, the hero quest, enemies to lovers, etc. One can see this in a lot of genre fiction, particularly Young Adult Fantasy/Sci-Fi. It's not bad, it's formulaic, but it's also refreshing knowing where the story beats are and what's going to happen. 

The Merciful Crow was a fun read that I could not put down. I read the majority of this book in one day. Owen creates a world that's interesting and diverse enough, but with the same tropes we've seen before so we know the ride and how it's going to play out. There's a lot that she does to add her spin on the genre. Women have a lot more power in this book. Not just the young women typically fighting older women, but you see women in a lot roles that others might have written as men. It was nice that characters had different sexualities, from being gay to pansexual. It was lovely that this was not a source of conflict- that Owen created a world where who you loved was just a part of life and no one cared. She gave a glimpse of what that looks like. It was disappointing though that there was not more queer love in this book. Having pan/gay main characters is great, but seeing them in queer relationships would have been cool too. 

I also appreciated how this book ends. Yes, it's the beginning of the series, but it's not like I need to read the rest. It's a complete book on it's own. If we want to explore her world more, then yeah, you can, if not, there's a complete story here.