Title An Enchantment of Ravens Series --- Author Margaret Rogerson Cover Art --- Publisher Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2017 First Printing Margaret K. McElderry Books - 2017 Category Young Adult Warnings None Main Characters Isobel, Rook, Gadfly Main Elements Faeries

Every enchantment has a price.

With a flick of her paintbrush, Isobel creates stunning portraits for a dangerous set of clients: the fair folk. These immortal creatures cannot bake bread or put a pen to paper without crumbling to dust. They crave human Craft with a terrible thirst, and they trade valuable enchantments for Isobel’s paintings. But when she receives her first royal patron—Rook, the autumn prince—Isobel makes a deadly mistake. She paints mortal sorrow in his eyes, a weakness that could cost him his throne, and even his life.

Furious, Rook spirits Isobel away to his kingdom to stand trial for her crime. But something is seriously amiss in his world, and they are attacked from every side. With Isobel and Rook depending upon each other for survival, their alliance blossoms into trust, perhaps even love . . . a forbidden emotion that would violate the fair folks’ ruthless laws, rendering both their lives forfeit. What force could Isobel's paintings conjure that is powerful enough to defy the ancient malice of the fairy courts?

Isobel and Rook journey along a knife-edge in a lush world where beauty masks corruption and the cost of survival might be more frightening than death itself.

I fell in love with this book from the first page. Rogerson created such beautiful, cruel and inhuman fair folk. At the same time, while dangerous and always looking for ways to play tricks on the silly mortals, they can't resist humans either. Only humans can make things, like paint, cook or sew. The fairies can apply glamours to make things appear as they are not, but they cannot create, and for that they are forever jealous, perhaps why they are so eager to trick us, as a kind of punishment for being something they cannot. And as a human, I must admit seeing their confusion around things like cooking one's food first, or not wanting to eat a pile of maggots glamoured to look like a tart, amusing. They find us as incomprehensible as we find them.

And the fairy beasts, creatures made of death and decay that may appear like a stag but as the glamour flickers, one sees they consist of rotten wood, bones and maggots. Warped creatures that are appearing more and more frequently as something is corrupted deep in the heart of the fairy lands.

Isobel has spent her life working with the fair folk. She knows how to deal with them, to flatter them, and most of all, to ensure her payments for her paintings aren't more of a curse than a boon. Fairies obviously don't pay with money but with enchantments.

Then one day, the Prince of Autumn himself comes to have his portrait painted. He is disarmingly human, but never forget that not only is he fey, he's royalty and easily insulted. As he is when Isobel paints him a little too realistically, exposing what looks very much like human sorrow in his eyes. He whisks her away to his lands to have her stand trial for her outrageous act, only to find there are more important things going on than a personal insult to his vanity. That, and he might just be, maybe, falling in love with her. But there's a law for that, the two races should never mix, and death is the price of love.

This book was beautifully written, absolutely magical, and the only fault I could find in it was that I read it for free on rivetedlit.com, but I wish I had my own copy. It seems a little silly to run out and buy it now that I've read it, but maybe I'll keep my eye out just the same. This is a book I would definitely read again one day.