In The Ravenous Dark is dark and action packed fantasy about a pansexual bloodmage who reluctantly gets paired with an undead spirit known as “guardians” and they start a rebellion causing great chaos between the living and the dead!

I was sucked into this book so quickly!! The world building is detailed, and has some creep factor which y’all know is my thing. The characters are diverse and well developed. I loved the family mysteries and the politics that are an important part of the plot. This dark fantasy standalone is sure to steal your heart!

Rovan wants nothing to do with magic or the royals. Especially since they took her father from her when she was young. In The Ravenous Dark, Strickland tries to infuse the plot with social commentary and weak story building. From chapter one, it felt as if the reader was dropped into a story half way. Most of the characters are not well formed and the connections are superficial.

This is an extremely hard book to review because it was objectively bad but so damn readable that I really enjoyed it in spite of itself. The "ace" representation was laughable at best and insulting at worst -- hey authors, please stop making all of your ace characters extremely flirty and sexual just to make them more "relatable" to non-ace folks. The magic system made no sense and the descriptions of people's clothing and appearance (which made up roughly 30% of the book) were 2000's fanfic levels of insipid. The romances came out of nowhere and seemed to be based on nothing more than the protagonist's constant thirstiness.

I'll give the author this though -- the protagonist was as insufferable and absent of thought as I was at 19. And the few instances of actual gore/horror were surprisingly well done.

LOVED this one! Rovan quickly became one of my favorite antiheroes! Morally grey to the core! I appreciated the poly relationship! I also thought the magic system was unique and intense!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for giving me a free advanced copy of this book to read and review.

I did not have the time to read this book as it got archived. I do believe I would have enjoyed this cute story.

In the Ravenous Dark was everything I had hoped it would be and then some. I loved the LGBT representation and, of course, the horror! A.M. Strickland is now officially an auto-buy author for me.

This was definitely an interesting story. I found myself completely involved from start to finish. The pacing was amazing and once I started, I did not want to finish. I felt like the flow was very well done and each plot point to the next was very fluid. At one point, I remember thinking, how did this book even end up here? Nothing felt disconnected and I really enjoyed it. The stakes were high and the world was well explained. I thought it was very unique as well. My only issue was the ending. I really didn't like it and it just didn't fit with the whole narrative. It's hard to explain without spoiling but it just did not work for me.

I loved the characters... Well mostly. I thought Rovan was an excellent main character. Even though she got a little snippy and unnecessary point, she realized her mistakes. The representative was amazing in this book and felt so natural. This is the type of book that I don't think would have worked out without the rep. It felt so natural for Rovan and I really enjoyed it. Lydea was my biggest issue. I enjoyed her character in the beginning but as the book went on, the more I didn't enjoy her. After one scene, it definitely made me not like her. Ivrilos was so interesting and I definitely liked him more. However, Japha was the true star of this book. Every scene with them in it was my favorite.

Kinda boring and the polyamory felt forced rather than organic, made it feel cheesy to me. It was more tell than show.

great book and had me on my seat. I enjoyed the characters and all that happened in the book. I enjoyed being in this world and seeing the growth of the characters. I enjoyed the drama of the story and I can't wait to read others books by this author.

I have mixed feelings about this book. I liked the characters and especially the romantic relationships within the story, and I thought that was a major highlight. The writing was also very strong and the magic system was pretty intriguing. I just think the pacing of the book was a little bit slow, and that was the one thing I didn’t really like about it. That aside, it was still a good fantasy book.

This one took me by surprise, in an exceptionally good way. I loved how dark and raw this story was, and even though I did not expect to love it as much, I was sucked into the story from the beginning, and really enjoyed it. I normally don't like the main character, but Rovan was amazing, and I loved how fierce she was. This will definitely be a book you can find me rereading!

Absolutely amazing novel. I was hooked from the first chapter until it was entirely taken aback that it was over. I’m officially a follower of this author, and will preorder anything that they release. The writing style is so refined and the world building is so unique and oftentimes complex, I find myself telling all of my friends to pick up this book, and keep an eye on upcoming works.

This was my first novel from Strickland and I was not disappointed! The wordbuilding was particularly fantastic. I genuinely got lost in the world as Roven explored and learned about it. So often in YA we find MC that are overly whiney or irritating. I did not find that so with Roven. She was a breath of fresh air in a stagnant MC world.

The use of FOUND FAMILY in this novel is one of the big hooks for me. With a supporting cast just as diverse as the main character, we build a community of people with Roven. Each friendship formed added to the love of the book.

The romance portions of the book felt a bit rushed, but not enough for me to dock a star from the overall rating. Part of that is the inclusivity that is explored in the book. Sexual relationships are not always monogamous, so while I felt that several of the relationships rushed, the normalcy of polyamorous relationships made the rushed nature of it matter a bit less for me.

Overall, this was a fantastic book and an instant favorite of mine! I recommend this book constantly, and I will continue to for a long time to come!

A very fun rollercoaster of mysterious plot twists. I wa not a fan of the love triangle, probably because I'm too old for it now. The main character makes up for it though. I reccommend.

I am disappointed with this book. I was expecting one thing and received another. It had potential but it was not well written.

I enjoyed this greek-fantasy story full of blood magic, death magic, and a lovely nuanced polyam group.

Content warnings include: death, gore, violence, transphobia, arranged marriage, misogyny, implications of abuse, sexual assault and rape.

The worldbuilding in this was done well. Nothing too out of the ordinary for a fantasy world, with clear ancient greek inspirations. I especially liked that some inherent norms of the setting where challenged within the story.

I enjoyed the characters a lot. Rovan was a rather classical protagonist, but didn’t veer into any of the stereotypes. It was the same for the other characters: Lydea, the powerful, ice-cold princess who does what (and who) she wants; Ivrilos, the dead warrior forcibly bound to Rovan; Japha, a cheerful courtier just trying to be themselves.
While many of the initial realtionships were hostile at their beginnings their developments to neutrality, allyship, friendship, romance and/or love all happened naturally. I liked that there so many going on in parallel, and I enjoyed how they all intersected.

Particularly great was that Rovan had a different relationship with each of the characters that end up as part of her polycule, and they each have a different (or no) relationship with each other. It included both sexual and platonic relationships, and two of the people involved are cousins (who of course have no romantic or sexual connection to each other). It’s also worth mentioning that there are explicitly pansexual, asexual, nonbinary and lesbian characters. The one thing I have to criticise here is that marketing has entirely ignored the presence of the one member of the polycule with who Rovan doesn’t have a sexual relationship.

After finishing, I have to admit I am still somewhat unclear on some of the details of the magic, but I thought that was fine. I liked how death was handled in the book, and how it all tied together to be resolved. My suspension of disbelieve was challenged, but never broken.

This was AMAZING! I loved all the characters and their relationships. The world building and Magic systems were both super interesting. By the end of the book I was on edge waiting to see what was happening next.

Super excited to see what this author has next!

This one took me a long time to finish because it was a temporary DNF. I knew I would eventually want to finish it, but I had to be in the right mood to read it.

While this is definitely a fantasy novel with a very unique setting and idea, I felt that it suffered from a few things that held it back from being great. I loved the pansexual main character, polyamorous representation, and general vibes, I think this book could have seriously benefitted from being split in 2. It needed a little more time to explore these incredible characters and relationships.

I was a little bothered by the fade to black when it came to the female love scene. It seems like within books that have relationships between multiple sexuality pairings, girl on girl intimate scenes get faded to black while their heterosexual pairings get shown more in depth.

The one thing this book had more than enough of was descriptions of clothing. While the clothing was definitely an interesting part of the overall world and atmosphere, it felt like it was the most described thing in the book. Seriously, how many times can you describe clothes in one book?

Overall I thought this one was very unique and I would definitely read something else by this author. I'm looking forward to seeing how their writing grows, especially with how adventurous and unique this one is.

This book was nonstop intrigue and twists. From one moment to the next I was never quite sure what would happen next. Our main character is full of sass but also doubts which makes her super compelling to follow. I also loved this version of a love triangle, when usually they annoy me. Great book!