Book Review: Raven, by Lori Janeski

Nevermore... now with more attitude problem

Lori Janeski’s Phoenix was a high-tension science fiction thriller that went from averting one simple terrorist attack, to saving the solar system.

Now, David Carter and his wife Veronique are back, and now, they are hip deep in a new threat.

Someone is stealing children.

The Story

After solving the Phoenix case, David Carter has been suitably punished: he’s been promoted to a desk job, running an entire team of field agents. He’s the replacement for the lead investigator in a major kidnapping case.

Thirty children are missing, gone without a trace. The only thing left in their place is a raven feather.

With a team, the dynamics of the novel has changed from the first one, but the Carters are by no means “safe.” It’s soon clear that there’s a mole in the office. David and Veronique are both under review by their own internal affairs. The terrorists from the last book are still hunting them. And as the threats grow around them, they have a sneaking suspicion that the Carters are the ultimate target.

Janeski still has a masterful work here. Despite the tone of this being more of a police procedural, this is anything but by the book. There’s a fresh plot twist approximately every hundred pages. And compared to the last book, it’s only 400 pages, instead of 800. There’s less world-building, because she’s not creating five cultures on multiple planets, while tangling with three adversaries at the same time. (That’s if you don’t count two Internal Affairs Agencies coming after them both, the mafia getting involved, the terrorist random encounters, the main psychopaths and the mole in the agency as a six-sided chess game.)

Funny enough, via Veronique, Janeski manages to carry an amazing amount of the book on microexpressions — the only other person I’ve ever seen do that is Timothy Zahn.

The only weak part is the mystery … but that’s only if you have a good recall on the end of Phoenix, and I read that book twice, so I cheated. I knew who had to be behind it from page one.

The Characters

David Carter looks far more mentally stable in this book. Granted, his police style is still very “Adam Baldwin on a bad day.” Marriage has taken the edge off of his borderline burnout.

The World

In this book, there’s no real additional world-building outside of their professional associations. But there was so much world-building in book one, this series doesn’t need any more.

Politics

Depends, do you think the Patriot act was a good idea? No? Good, you’ll love this book.

Content Warning

None. I don’t even think used particularly harsh language in this.

Who is it for?

Do you like spy thrillers, but in space? Do you want something that’s more Timothy Zahn, but slightly less twisty than his non-Star Wars series? Lori has you covered.

Why buy it?

If Timothy Zahn wrote a police procedural with spy elements, it would be Raven.