Summary: Urban fantasy about what the role of guilt and repair is for those who have been raised to harm.
When Among Crows is the first of Veronica Roth’s books that I have read since the Divergent series. I read the Divergent series soon after they were released in the 2011-13 era. I think I read all of the series at least twice and I saw the movies. But since then, while Roth has written a number of additional books, I just haven’t bothers to pick them up.
I saw When Among Crows was on sale for kindle and I picked it up because it was short and because it was a modern urban fantasy based in Chicago (similar to Desden Files) and it was loosely based on Slavic folktales. I also picked up The Witch and the Tsar at the same time and it will be my next fiction book. Both books use the folktale character of Baba Yaga and I picked them up together to see how different authors handle the retelling of similar stories.
Similar to other urban fantasy, there are more creatures than just humans living in our world, but not everyone can see them. Dymitr opens the books. He is human and on a quest, but the object of that quest is not fully revealed until very close to the end of the book. Along the way, Dymitr seeks out help from various creatures that feed on human fear or pain or sadness.
This is not a young adult book like Percy Jackson or The Carver and the Queen Emma C. Fox or KB Hoyle’s fairytale series, this is more like Dresden Files’ level of violence and dark fantasy themes, but with less humor than Dresden Files. There isn’t any sex, but there are a few kisses between a gay couple and that doesn’t go any further.
This is a bit between a long novella and a short novel at 175 pages. I read it in three brief reading sessions. I was facinated by the main theme of the book, revenge, guilt and atonement. It takes a while to get into who is guilty for what, but all the characters have killed or harmed others. Some have killed or harmed out of self defense. Some have killed or harmed because they were taught to fear others or that others were trying to harm them and so you needed to kill or be killed.
It isn’t fully revealed until later and it would be a spoiler to discuss, but relationship across boundries is the cause of coming to see a different perspective. And once you see a different perspective, your guilt and the role you have in repair of harm does matter.
Urban fantasy does not tend to take a light view of magic. Magic can be well used or badly used, but regardless, there is always a cost. This book continues that general genre trend.
I lived in Chicago for years. This book uses the polish immigrant story to explore how old world fairytale creatures came to the new world. But the city was not as much of a character to the book as I would have hoped. The next book in the series comes out later this year and by advance page count (which can be wrong) the next book is closer to 300 pages, or nearly twice as long. I look forward to picking it up when it is released.
Spoilers ahead, do not read if you do not want to know them.
I went back and forth discussing guilt and repair as part of the book because there is no way to discuss without spoilers. But I do want to get some ideas out for my own purposes. Roth is building on old Slavic folk tales but has not limited the setting to those older times. This is set in a modern context. Dymitr was raised as part of a family from the “old country” to kill “monsters.” While he does have a long life because of some magic that his people have, he is still human. He was trained to think of the “monsters” as only monsters and not beings with feelings and independent selves. That changed when he was ordered to kill the mother of a childhood friend. He did not know she was a “monster” and that started a process of him coming to realize that everything he had been told was not necessarily true. When “the other” stopped being “the other” and started being someone he had a relationship with, then he could no longer think of himself as valiantly protecting the world. Instead he came to see himself and his family as the monsters.
There is a thread here about guilt and repair. He seeks a type of permanent death because of guilt. Some of the beings who have helped him, and who he has helped, attempt to stop him from essentially committing a type of suicide because it will not being back anyone that he has previously killed. All of those who are giving him advice at this point have also killed. It is not that magical beings fear death less or want violence more, but that violence has a reality in the magical world because magical being tend to live so long and reproduce so much more slowly. Suicide out of guilt does not repair. And that is really the point where Dymitr grapples. Does he have an obligation to repair, or is his desire to end pain greater than his obligation to repair.
There are a number of places where parallels can be drawn between this story and human realities. Long conflicts like Palestinian and Israeli conflicts or guilt around white people coming to terms with their ancestors stealing Native American land or capturing, buying, selling or owning African slaves is another parallel. I think the parallels are helpful in grappling with what it is that Dymitr is feeling even if those parallels tend to be more systemic than the personal guilt that Dymitr is feeling. This is not a clean ending that just solves all the problems. And I am interested to find out what the next book does with this because while he comes to an answer, it does not do anything about the extended guilt of Dymitr‘s family and that larger group he is a part of.
When Among Crows by Veronica Roth (Curse Bearer Book #1) Purchase Links: Hardcover, Kindle Edition, Audible.com Audiobook