If the above ingredients make you think that Chadbourn has made another good start in his follow up the Dark Age sequence, you'd be right. Although, not without qualification. On the plus side, I found the characterisation, with a single glaring exception, was up to the author's usual high standards, the premise ingenious, and the story faster than a speeding bullet train. There were nods to Cinderella, The Da Vinci Code and The Matrix, deliciously nasty plot twists, acerbic humour, and dirty great spiders. I hate spiders. The negatives were Niamh, who in previous volumes was an aristocratic, otherworldly wise, arch manipulator. In this book she is little more than a lovesick puppy, following Church through time. There is a nice pay off, but this is tossed in like a hand-grenade, with no explanation, for now. There were also a couple of critical escapes, which required a little too much suspension of disbelief. One of Chadbourn's strengths in previous works, has been his ability to make such things both clever and credible, as opposed to clumsy and convenient. Most jarring, were the introduction and dodgy removal of a super weapon, the Existence Shears, out of nowhere, and another scene where the original Bothers and Sisters of Dragons have their most dangerous foe unconscious at their feet, only to leave him where he is in favour of going on the run. Sometimes I heard the fingernails of the plot scraping down the blackboard of believability. But, you've got to love a writer who has one of his main characters soul sucked by something unpleasant lurking in her wardrobe. Even when it feels like the wheels might come off the bus, the story keeps rolling, and momentum carries it over the rough spots.

In conclusion, Jack of Ravens contains a lot less of the gritty urban modern and ancient supernatural mix that made Chadbourn's reputation, but attempts to reach further than most cross-genre works. Dark magic, well researched mythology, the 60s counter culture, sword swinging action, alternate history, light horror, romance, and even a dusting of philosophy concerning the nature of reality are all thrown into a roiling pot. The final creation is a patchy, though still highly readable book, which ends in an intriguing, slightly baffling fashion, pregnant with the promise of the feast yet to come.