Wonderful Ravens

I don’t write many book reviews, but sometimes I just like the book so much that I want to talk about it. Today the book is Beneath Raven’s Wing.

Beneath Raven’s Wing by Vonnie Winslow-Crist

Beneath Raven’s Wing is a wonderful assortment of immensely entertaining and satisfying short stories. When you start reading each one, you are drawn in and can’t leave until the story ends, which, however, is when you can’t keep from plunging into the next one. The writing is that good. Vonnie Winslow-Crist truly works magic with language.

In fascinating variety, all the stories have ravens, as active characters, as mysterious bystanders, or as a major element of the atmosphere. A young boy’s kindness to ravens is rewarded by their encouragement of his magic skills during difficult circumstances. A girl can transform into a raven to protect children from bullies. Ravens watch and protect a child of the moonlight as she saves her sister from trolls. An unkind man, given a choice of afterlives, chooses the worse possible. A man joins a vampire family, who can turn into ravens, to protect the woman he loves. A daughter brings her dead pirate father back to life as ravens watch. A raven augmented with mechanical parts must find his new home when his creator dies. A man uses the wishes a genie grants to make it happen that his long-since dead uncle found love before he died. With ravens in the background a young student dies from a snake bite despite warnings from deathwatch beetles. A shaman lures a discontented young man to his stone garden as a mate for his daughter. A raven watches both the car accident that kills Paul McCartney and the fate of the human witness. A modern undertaker is asked for fingernails and toenails that Norse gods need as ravens perch on Odin’s shoulders. With ravens in the background a vampire in ancient Egypt is reunited with his first love. Ravens caw as a girl meets an alien glob from Antarctica who leaves stones on her grave after she is killed in a traffic accident. A man notices that ravens always try to warn him; he helps undead boys get their revenge on his half-uncle who killed them. A guardian raven is able to protect a boy from a storm off the monastery Isle of Iona but worries that she won’t always be there for him.

Do yourself a favor and indulge in the pure pleasure of reading this book.