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Hello and welcome! My name is Emma and I've been a bookseller for over a decade. I also write fantasy under the name E. M. Epps. This blog features my Two-Paragraph Book Reviews. One paragraph from me. One from the book. Here's why I keep it short.

You are here: Home > Review: “As the Crow Flies” by Robin Lythgoe

Review: “As the Crow Flies” by Robin Lythgoe

Image Emma 4 March 2018

Thumbs up for As the Crow Flies by Robin Lythgoe. Fantasy.

A typical fantasy quest story with atypically excellent writing. The main character, Crow, a thief, is a beautifully-drawn combination of neurotic, clever, avaricious, devout (in his own way…), snarky, and just plain funny. If you like fantasy with a memorable first-person narrator, don’t miss this. (One caveat: the female characters are all given extremely short shrift, but I don’t know if that’s typical in the author’s novels or if this book is an outlier. It bugged me, but I enjoy her style enough that I would recommend this book anyway.)

Predictably muddy, innumerable carts and wagons churned Fesefi’s northern road to ooze underfoot. Forced to a sedate walk, it didn’t take a mind-reader to discern Tanris’s growing frustration. I let him take the lead without argument, for I had no great desire to have his angry gaze burning holes in the back of my head, and I doubted that my hat would do much in the way of diverting his glare. The vagaries of flight had robbed the thing of its fashionable mien, and I mourned the loss of its beautiful, jaunty feather. I’d forgotten about it while aboard The Nightingale, but in my defense, I’d been somewhat occupied by pain and the distraction of conning the crew. The captain, bless him, refunded most of our passage, though he hadn’t known at the time. It is one of the sad circumstances of my life that I rarely get to admire the astonished faces of those whose lives—and pockets—I’ve touched.


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My bookstore is an affiliate of Bookshop.org, so we will earn a commission if you click through my links and make a purchase. I, personally, am also an affiliate of the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and will likewise make a commission if you click through those links and make a purchase. Having to use Amazon doesn’t fill me with joy, but they’re the only good affiliate program for used books available right now. So…that’s the way it is.

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