After salivating over its gorgeous book cover and reading its very promising premise (seriously, what girl would deliberately miss out on a whimsical world with faerie lore and art?), I badly wanted to love An Enchantment of Ravens. For the most part, the story explored a ton of ideas that I found incredibly intriguing: that the ability to create and to make things is exclusive to humans; that the fair folk are overly dependent on their glamour; and that the price of immortality is the absolute detachment from their sense of humanity, that is, human emotion. I was also fascinated by the political elements in the culture and societal structure of the fair folk. Plus, okay, I will admit: some scenes and dialogues in the book either made me smile widely or chuckle silently.

Unfortunately, for me, the good was greatly outweighed by the bad, especially because it seemed to me that the greatest assets of the story were not fully fleshed out. Although it was refreshing to have a heroine who refused to give up her passion in exchange for the opportunity to spend eternity with the man she loved, Isobel was not someone I could root for simply because she really lacked dimension, and likewise, all the characters were sorely underdeveloped. In line with this, the romance between Isobel and Rook was poorly, if not very oddly, executed and came across as strained and unbelievable.

What frustrated me the most was the story’s plot itself. For one thing, An Enchantment of Ravens was heavily centered on the relationship between Isobel and Rook. Since the two characters lacked any semblance of chemistry and things between them escalated in a ridiculous pace, their romance made little to no sense. However, what made less sense was all the pointless journeying that Isobel and Rook did, which constituted the bulk of the story. I had difficulty in deciphering the motivations for their journey and what the actual endgame was. In other words, the plot was a blazing hot, haphazardly constructed mess.

Overall, An Enchantment of Ravens was brimming with heaps of potential, which was unfortunately set aside in favor of a terribly executed romance and meaningless wandering in what could have been a thrillingly magical world. Although Margaret Rogerson’s writing style was excellent, vividly descriptive, and refreshingly humorous, it was not enough to salvage the book for me, especially considering that the story’s ending was far too convenient and significantly anticlimactic.