The Faithless Hawk
by Margaret Owen
read by Amy Landon
Macmillan Young Listeners, 2020. 12 hours, 29 minutes.
Review written January 21, 2024, from a library eaudiobook.
Starred Review
The Faithless Hawk concludes the duology begun in The Merciful Crow, and although the first gives a satisfying story on its own, you won’t want to read the second without it. And if you’ve read the first, you’ll want to read on — so I count myself lucky that I didn’t discover this author until this duology was finished, so I could read them only a couple weeks apart.
I was nervous about the title. Because our hero Fie from the Crow caste is in love with a boy from the Hawk caste. They have to go separate ways at the end of the first book, and the title worried me.
And yes, in the first book, Fie has to attempt to get Prince Jasimir and his cousin and body double to their allies. In this book, they need to get ready to take on the evil queen herself. And when they hear the king has died of the plague, they know she will be making her move.
Well, the queen is more powerful than they ever imagined, and it looks like they’re doomed. It’s going to take desperate measures to defeat her — and it looks like the one Fie loves has made a bad choice.
This book goes much deeper into this world and the castes and the dead gods reborn and the ways the magic works. There are twelve castes, each with their own birthright. Except the crows, who seem to have none, but can commndeer any other caste’s birthright if they have a tooth from someone of that caste. But one thing leads to another, and Fie is told that their birthright was stolen, and if she keeps an ages-old covenant, she can get it back.
It’s all wonderfully done, with several places where I thought I was just going to have to accept a terrible ending and other places where information I’d been given before produced a moment of recognition where I realized how something would work. And okay, there were some other places where I was completely surprised by the turn things took.
But it all adds up to another wonderful book by one of my new favorite authors — and deep sadness that now I’ve read all of her books and the next one doesn’t come out until 2025. (Here’s hoping Amazon got that wrong and really it’s sooner.)
Find this review on Sonderbooks at: www.sonderbooks.com/Teens/faithless_hawk.html
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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