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154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
Fantastical Truth Podcast, Mar 21, 2023

Exile
Reviews, Mar 17, 2023

153. When Can Deconstructionism Threaten Christian Fiction? | with Michael Young aka ‘Wokal Distance’
Fantastical Truth Podcast, Mar 14, 2023

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Enhanced, Candace Kade
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A Sword for the Immerland King, F. W. Faller
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154. What If You Had to Fake Being Genetically Modified? | Enhanced with Candace Kade
Fantastical Truth, Mar 21, 2023

153. When Can Deconstructionism Threaten Christian Fiction? | with Michael Young aka ‘Wokal Distance’
Fantastical Truth, Mar 14, 2023

152. How Can Christian Fantasy Fans Heal from Church Trauma? | with Marian Jacobs and L. G. McCary
Fantastical Truth, Mar 7, 2023

151. How Can Fantastical Satire Sharpen Our Theology? | The Pilgrim’s Progress Reloaded with David Umstattd
Fantastical Truth, Feb 28, 2023

150. Is the U.S. Government Covering Up Spy Balloons or Alien Spaceships? | with James R. Hannibal
Fantastical Truth, Feb 21, 2023

149. Why Do Christian Fiction Fans Love So Much Romance?
Fantastical Truth, Feb 14, 2023

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Exile
“This gentle fantasy from Loren G. Warnemuende shows little magic or strange creatures, focusing on complex emotions and relationships.”
—Lorehaven on Mar 17, 2023

Illusion
“Frank Peretti’s last novel creates a romantic world with sci-fi flourishes where likeable heroes, villain twists, and familiar places sell a dramatic performance.”
—Lorehaven on Mar 10, 2023

War in Heaven
“Charles Williams’s classic supernatural thriller pairs a deeply spiritual worldview with perceptive examinations of human nature.”
—Lorehaven on Mar 3, 2023

Bear Knight
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—Lorehaven on Feb 24, 2023

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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/ Library
Author:
Morgan L. Busse
Ages:
adult young adult
Genres:
fantasy
BookTags:
dreams fantasy The Ravenwood Saga series
Publisher:
Bethany House
Lorehaven may use referral links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
“Those who walk in dreams wield great power to inspire—or destroy.”
—Lorehaven review, fall 2018

Mark of the Raven

Lady Selene is torn between upholding her family’s legacy or seeking the true reason behind her family’s gift of dreamwalking.
Morgan L. Busse · fantasy for adult, young adult readers · November 2018

Lady Selene is the heir to the Great House of Ravenwood and the secret family gift of dreamwalking. As a dreamwalker, she can enter a person’s dreams and manipulate their greatest fears or desires. For the last hundred years, the Ravenwood women have used their gift of dreaming for hire to gather information or to assassinate.

As she discovers her family’s dark secret, Selene is torn between upholding her family’s legacy–a legacy that supports her people–or seeking the true reason behind her family’s gift.

Her dilemma comes to a head when she is tasked with assassinating the one man who can bring peace to the nations, but who will also bring about the downfall of her own house.

One path holds glory and power, and will solidify her position as Lady of Ravenwood. The other path holds shame and execution. Which will she choose? And is she willing to pay the price for the path chosen?

Lorehaven may use referral links. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Review of Featured Review: Mark of the Raven

Those who walk in dreams wield great power to inspire—or destroy.
Lorehaven Review Team, fall 2018

For generations, the women of House Ravenwood have abused their gift of dreams.

No, they are not gifted with daydreams or hopes for a better future. Instead, these women inherit the supernatural ability to actually walk in another person’s dreams. They’re able to share in, and even help to manage, a person’s memories and fears.

Such a great gift may help a dreamwalker better know or even love another person.

Or such a terrible gift may help to inflame the dreaming target’s worst terror, working from the inside out to ruin or even murder that person.

As readers fall into Mark of the Raven’s vision, House Ravenwood’s heir apparent, Lady Selene, has just received the dreamwalking gift. At this rite of passage, Selene becomes privy to more secrets of her family, their castle and lands, and their part in the history of the land’s seven great houses that are each supernaturally gifted.

Selene also learns that her family line was nearly destroyed by an evil empire, left without help from other houses. For Selene’s mother, Lady Ragna Ravenwood, that generational grievance justifies many actions, including the fact that dreamwalkers like Ragna have acted more like dream mercenaries. They’ve sold their gift to any employer who needs to slay a political enemy and make it look like natural death.

What, then, does a young dreamwalker do when her mother tells her that dream-assassination is the only way to protect your family—and that, by the way, if you don’t, she’ll just go to your younger sisters and train them to become killers?

This last tension for Lady Selene seems to give this story its primary driving force. As Morgan Busse’s first Ravenwood Saga episode, Raven is light on action but heavy on familiar-yet-complex character drama, mounting tension, and lush details.

Readers may especially appreciate Busse’s emphasis on the tragedy and humanity of every person, both House leaders and the marginalized. In this world, every soul matters—not just the life of Damien Maris, the water-gifted leader of his house who wrestles with the choices of war, but the lives of the castle servants whom Selene has known for years and whose memories she’s forced to turn against them.

Morgan L. Busse has written six novels, including the Follower of the Word fantasy trilogy and The Soul Chronicles series. She and her husband have four children.

MorganLBusse.com
@MorganLBusse

Explore this novel in the Lorehaven library.

Such themes could lead to simplistic conclusions: peace good, war bad; love good, assassination bad. Yet Busse doesn’t let Raven escape into such sentiments. Damien wants to protect his House for peace, but can’t do this without also imperiling the lives of his enemies. Selene wants to protect her sisters, and also her own heart from the pain of wounding others, but at the cost of her own humanity. And all the while, their world is haunted by the whispers of some lost and ancient past, when every member of every House used their supernatural gifts for good.

This is a great way for Christian-made stories to explore magical gifts. It’s not the magic itself, but its human limitations—and even its human abuse—that makes it interesting in a story. For the Ravenwoods, we’re certain their sin has separated them from rightful use of their gifts, but not forever. Here’s dreaming that fans can share in more stories like this, in The Ravenwood Saga series and beyond.

Best for: Young-adult and adult fans of medieval fantasy, who love human drama and poignant challenges about character relationships and talents.

Discern: Selene’s family drama, which includes a sinful parent and rightful rebellion against her; references to physical attraction, but within a context of covenant love.

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Lorehaven magazine, spring 2020

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Lorehaven helps Christian fans explore fantastical stories for Christ’s glory: fantasy, science fiction, and beyond. Articles, the library, reviews, podcasts, gifts, and the Lorehaven Guild community help fans discern and enjoy the best Christian-made fantastical stories, applying their meanings to the real world Jesus Christ calls us to serve. Subscribe free to get any updates you choose and to access the Lorehaven Guild.
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