A Kindness of Ravens

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

A tale of sexy spies, Celtic deities, ancient magic and a little light Isekai.

It's 2008. The Blanks are Britain’s most valuable intelligence assets; dangerous, damaged people who sacrifice everything for a number, a code name and the chance to serve Queen and Country. Between them they can infiltrate anywhere, kill anyone and steal anything.

But now someone is hunting them. Picking them off in ways that seem supernatural.

Updates every second day.

This novel is already complete. New content published every second day. If you want me to publish more often, or more stories with these characters, then you can always get my attention viaKo-Fi.

Information

Status: Completed
Year: 2022
Author: C.T. Yarrow

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 45
Views: 38,046

Chapters(61 total)

Reviews

No reviews yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!

Community Reviews(6)

FerreteerRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I was frustrated back at chapter 15 because I stopped reading in order to look for and buy the book. I could not find it! This is rediculous! This is absolutely the quality of urban fantasy that I'm used to paying for! Well developed three dimensional characters with healthy chemistry have absolutely no right being on Royal Road!
And now I'm being told that my review is too short? That's it. Where's your manager? How many times do I have to come back and rewrite my review because it doesn't fulfill some arbitrary length requirement? Four times so far! Five times!
Well, I suppose I'll just write the word "word" another seventy-eight times.
word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word word
Six times. It bloody well IS at least 200 words long! See, authors, see? THIS is why we resist writing reviews. I came here with every intention of writing about how good this story is, and how much I'm enjoying it, and how I'd like to PAY for it. But Royal Road JUST! WON'T! LET ME!
MelantheRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
As a disclaimer, I want to let any review readers know that I'm just leaving a review at volume one! I'm planning on continuing to read, and may update the review once I'm caught up. For now though, here's my take on volume one!
A Kindness of Ravens (haha, cute name! I think it's fairly well known, but if any readers didn't catch the pun, a group of ravens is called an unkindness!) is a story with a lot of action! So much action, maybe even a little too much action with too many characters. The author was clever in how they did introductions, with most POV characters getting their own little introductory shot, but oh my gosh, it is a lot to keep up with! They were fun chapters to read though- it almost reminded me of a scene from a heist movie? When they're jumping around showing each character.
As far as characters go though, even with the huge cast, each character clearly has their own role, personality, and life. It's fun to see them come together and interact, and I bet the cast is going to start whittling down anyway, based on the author's summary.
As far as style and grammar go, I didn't notice any mistakes or errors that were bad enough that it shook me out of reading. I would bet on the author being British, so I'd advise other Americans to keep that in mind while they're reading! Just because it's different to us doesn't mean it's wrong.
Either way, this is a really fun read! The author did a great job with their story, and I look forward to reading more!
Onion-SanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A Kindness of Ravens tells the story of a group of highly trained and deadly spies who are defined by numbers and codenames. At the beginning of the story we get a general overview of each character's characteristics with chapters narrated in first person, showing a lot of each character's personality. Later on the story unfolds in unexpected ways and the rest I leave to the reader's imagination!
A Kindness of Ravens is a story with style. The writing is charming, clever, detailed in just the right point. The author doesn't get too attached to details to the point of slowing down the story and also doesn't forget to highlight what needs to be said. With this we have a clean and fluid narration, which makes the story very enjoyable to read. It reminded me a little of Ocean's Eleven, Snatch, and even Reservoir Dogs.
The story is original. Yes, it sounds like something very generic to say, but it is the truth. We have change in the narrative form and in the way the characters are presented. But the main point that makes the story more refreshing is that it is about a theme not often explored (and certainly not explored in Royal Road). What occurs, how it occurs, and the maturity of the characters to deal with the events makes it all a lot of fun to follow.
The characters are great. I say this keeping in mind that there are many central characters and that makes it much harder to control the scene and make it cohesive. Numbers 2 through 7 are very different from each other and since each one had an introductory chapter, it was very easy to tell who is who and how they care for and relate to each other. I really liked what I saw.
All in all I highly recommend reading Kindness of Ravens. It is a refreshing new storyline that should be enjoyed!
PlanetNilesRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
So yeah. I'm married to 'Cutty'. I was alpha reader, beta reader and muse on this project. I even came up with the working title. I could go on and on about the shared world that Kindness is set within. But I'm not here to talk about me.
My favorite thing about this story are the characters. Each of them is multiple dimensional. Even the most cardboard cutout, throwaway, characters get just enough depth that you can taste their IQ.
All of the SIS characters are broken people. Broken by circumstances, by background, and by deeds. Each broken in different and interesting ways. The Blanks doubly so.
Conversely the Department Y characters (you'll get to them soon enough) have been mended in weird and wonderful ways.
My other favourite bits are the homages. The references to other media. The multiple layers of jokes, puns, and nods to multiple fandoms. If you suspect that someone or something is reminding you of some other thing, that could well be deliberate.
I'd say more, but I am forbidden by the law of spoilerage.
TonyRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
STORY – A special MI6 type department is under attack by something they believe is supernatural, so they reluctantly work with a separate, supernatural-focused MI6 type department. Reluctantly since there’s some friction and bad-blood between the two. Some Lovecraftian elements, and hints at more.
STYLE – This isn’t easy to explain. Sometimes it reads very detective noir. It prominently reminds me of a specific type of movie – such as Guy Ritchie movies (Lock Stock, Man from UNCLE, Snatch, RocknRolla, The Gentleman), and the more recent Bullet Train – in book form, but with supernatural rolled into it too. Like these movies, it has a large cast of diverse eccentric characters, and even includes introduction-story flashbacks. Strong and distinctive prose and captivating writing style. Reads very British. I had to look up a bunch of words. Barracked? Never heard it before, not that I can remember.
CHARACTERS – There are lot of them, and they’re all pretty weird and trying to out-British each other, and the dialogue between them is very pretty great and witty and keeps the pages turning.
GRAMMAR – No issues at all.
I can’t wait to see where this goes, and if you’re looking for something different, or ran out of Guy Ritchie movies to watch, or want that type of movie in a book form with supernatural added in, you found that book.
ash-saltzmanRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Style: Smooth and consistent. Gives you a detailed image of the scenes without an information overload.
Grammar: Everything looked good and read well.
Story: The story is one that I have never seen before. It gives you exactly what the synopsis says, there is a highly trained group of spies that is being attacked. This group is mysterious in the fact that they are able to do some things that normal humans couldn’t. For the first couple of chapters though it is focused on what the spies were doing, and all I can say is that they were doing some interesting and entertaining things.
Characters:There is a cast of many different side characters along with our MC (At least our MC for the first couple chapters). Because there are so many characters, there is a lot of depth that hasn't been shown. For the first couple chapters most of the depth was how they related to each other. However, the story was continuously fleshing out all of the characters throughout the later chapters I read and I believe as the story goes on, all the characters will gain more depth.
Overall: A good story if you like spies, mystery, and a diverse cast of characters.