Book Review: Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle

Book: Gabriel Finley and the Raven's Riddle by George Hagin

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

How can 11-year-old Gabriel find his missing father, who seems to have vanished without a trace? With the help of Paladin—a young raven with whom he has a magical bond that enables them to become one creature—he flies to the foreboding land of Aviopolis, where he must face a series
of difficult challenges and unanswerable riddles that could lead to his father . . . or to his death.


Rating: 1 star

Review:

The premise for this was really interesting with 12 years old Gabriel Finley finding out about his family's involvement with ravens. The ravens in this story talk not only to each other but to supposedly only to certain humans. However throughout the whole story it didn't seem to matter who the person was the raven was able to talk to them.

While Gabriel is finding out about his family, he needed to figure out a way to rescue his father who is trapped in the underground world of Aviopolis. Also he needed to stop his evil uncle Corax from taking over the world once he can get his hands on the torc, a missing magical necklace.

Gabriel gets help from Paladin, the special raven he connects with and three other kids: Abby the quirky girl next door, Pamela the sullen and violin enthusiast girl who is temporarily staying at Gab's house while her and mother's home is being renovated and Somes the bully turned friend.

However, the execution didn't quite work. The story seemed to be all over the place it had too many subplots going on. It felt like the author didn't quite know which story to tell so decided to focus on all of them. Is it a fantasy horror story or is it a mystery adventure? It's hard to tell. I was also surprised by some of the graphic scenes in this book but since it's supposed to be geared towards middle grade readers they probably won't even notice it but it just surprised me. This might not be the best read for younger readers though. When did middle grade book become so dark and dreary?

I wasn't really fond of the characters either. I certainly didn't like Pamela's mother Trudy she was very mean towards Gabe. I didn't understand why Gabe's aunt Jasmine was written the way she was. Because even though she invited Trudy and Pamela to stay with them she should have immediately spoken to Trudy about how mean she was to Gabe and told her if she couldn't be nice then she would have to find another place to stay. Well, that's how I would have wrote it.

The kids in this story didn't act like kids, they didn't even seem surprised with the strange and magical things they saw and experienced. It was like they had seen it a million times and was no longer special. But as for personalities I thought Gabe and Abby were pretty cool. Now as for the adults they weren't so great, they were either mean, sneaky and murderous or aloof and dim-witted. There didn't seem to be much concern for the children in this story.

The best thing about this book for me were the riddles, I got to the place where I no longer cared what was going on in this story it was very slow moving at times. I feel like this book could have been a lot shorter there was way too much going on in this story.

Sorry, this book just wasn't a very good read.