{"id":3929,"date":"2010-02-16T02:23:16","date_gmt":"2010-02-16T07:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/?p=3929"},"modified":"2010-02-15T22:28:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-16T03:28:51","slug":"ravens-ladder-by-jeffrey-overstreet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/?p=3929","title":{"rendered":"Raven’s Ladder by Jeffrey Overstreet"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour<\/a><\/strong><\/span> <\/strong> book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old…or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

Today’s Wild Card author is: <\/strong><\/div>\n


<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Overstreet<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

and the book:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Raven’s Ladder<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

WaterBrook Press (February 16, 2010)<\/p>\n

***Special thanks to Staci Carmichael of WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for sending me a review copy.***<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:<\/span> <\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a>Jeffrey Overstreet is the skilled author of Auralia\u2019s Colors, twice-nominated for a Christy Award, and Cyndere\u2019s Midnight. His award-winning film reviews have appeared in Image, Books and Culture, Paste, and Christianity Today, and his \u201cmoviegoer\u2019s memoir\u201d Through a Screen Darkly is a popular exploration of faith and film in the U.S. and Europe. His website\u2013\u2013LookingCloser.org\u2013\u2013draws many thousands of readers each month. Jeffrey has recently spoken to large audiences in bookstores and universities across the U.S. and The Netherlands, including recent appearances at the Calvin Festival of Faith & Writing. Jeffrey and his wife Anne live in Shoreline, Washington.<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

Product Details:<\/p>\n

List Price: $13.99
\n Paperback: 400 pages
\n Publisher: WaterBrook Press (February 16, 2010)
\n Language: English
\n ISBN-10: 1400074673
\n ISBN-13: 978-1400074679<\/p>\n

AND NOW…THE FIRST CHAPTER:<\/span> <\/strong>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>CAL-RAVEN IN FOUR KINDS OF TROUBLE<\/p>\n


<\/p>\n

Auralia reached out to Cal-raven. As he approached, the flame of the candle he carried flapped like a flag in a hard wind.<\/p>\n

Her smile was mysterious, just as he remembered it. That detail had proved most difficult. Other aspects had come easier as his hands sculpted the stone. Her humble stature. The tiny knob of her chin. Her feet\u2014ten small toes emerging like a row of beads beneath a leafy skirt.<\/p>\n

Cal-raven was not a tall man, and yet Auralia, slight for sixteen, had stood only to his shoulder. He could see her open hands pressing through the span of fabric that she offered to any visitor.<\/p>\n

Almost a year had passed since he\u2019d found her in the Abascar dungeon, wrapped in a magnificent cloak. Their fleeting conversation was burned in his memory more vividly than yesterday. Unflinching, Auralia had voiced her faith in phantoms dreamed and legends whispered\u2013\u2013like the Keeper, that benevolent creature who haunted dreams, a silent guardian, a listener.<\/p>\n

Cal-raven had sculpted, erased, and then reshaped Auralia\u2019s lips, her eyebrows with their question pinched between them, her whole face filled with trembling hope that others would receive and understand her vision. She had been more than human. Or better, she had been more fully human than anyone around her.<\/p>\n

The king\u2019s hunting hound, his golden tail wagging, sniffed at the statue\u2019s ankles. \u201cHagah.\u201d The dog slumped down to the floor and sighed, resigned to wait.<\/p>\n

That fabric the statue held\u2013\u2013Cal-raven had not even tried to give it the textures and colors of Auralia\u2019s cloak. How could he? Its threads had glimmered with colors no eyes in Abascar had ever seen.<\/p>\n

\u201cTell the Keeper,\u201d he whispered, \u201cthat I don\u2019t know where to go from here.\u201d He ran his fingertips along the span that spilled like a waterfall from her upturned hands. \u201cWhen I was a child, I\u2019d have called out myself. It was easier then to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Auralia\u2019s expression did not change; it would not unless he changed it. Her polished eyes would not return his gaze for, in the tradition of House Abascar portraiture, they lacked detail. While each statue in the cavern was distinct\u2013\u2013the beloved and the burdensome, the wise and the foolish, the soldiers and the miscreants\u2013\u2013they shared that same indecipherable gaze, an affirmation of something altogether unnamable, inimitable. The mystery of the heart.<\/p>\n

Embarrassed at his habit of addressing this likeness, he knuckle-knocked Auralia\u2019s forehead. \u201cLast visit. Watch over these worn-out people for me, will you?\u201d<\/p>\n

Something shifted in the cavern behind him. Hagah lifted his head and followed his master\u2019s gaze through the long rows of statues.<\/p>\n

\u201cWynn?\u201d Cal-raven waited.<\/p>\n

Hagah\u2019s huge black nose emerged from flabby rolls of fur and sniffed. Then the dog set his chin back down on the ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll catch our pesky shadow in a dream, won\u2019t you?\u201d Cal-raven said, but he gave another look back.<\/p>\n

Why am I so agitated tonight? he wondered.<\/p>\n

Because some of them are turning against you, replied his father\u2019s ghostly voice. It\u2019s been almost a year. You\u2019ve mentioned New Abascar, but you still haven\u2019t shown them a plan.<\/p>\n

The statues that crowded the Hall of Remembering listened. These extravagant stone monuments gave shape to Cal-raven\u2019s promise that he would never let his people forget the lessons they\u2019d learned and that they would build a new house to honor those lost in Abascar\u2019s cataclysm.<\/p>\n

But the name grudgers, once given to those who had rebelled against their previous king\u2019s oppressive ways, now applied to people distrustful of Cal-raven. Grudgers objected to his embrace of the foolish along with the wise; his equal concern for the weak and the strong; his insistence that every person, no matter how \u201cuseful,\u201d be fed and shown the care of their healer. Moreover, grudgers grumbled about the way Cal-raven gambled their futures on possibilities revealed to him in dreams.<\/p>\n

Tonight Cal-raven had taken the fire walk. Lesyl\u2019s turn had come, but he had offered to patrol the passages for her. He wanted to hear her sing the Evening Verse one last time before his departure the next sundown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve written a piece that can only be played by two, \u201dLesyl had said when the fire walk brought him to the chamber of Auralia\u2019s gallery. Sitting against the wall decorated by an array of colorful weavings, she tuned the twelve stringed tharpe, a formidable, sonorous instrument. She seemed relaxed, even happy, and oblivious that this was a farewell.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere.\u201d She picked up a wooden spiral. \u201cYou remember how to play the hewson-pipe, don\u2019t you? Oh, come now, don\u2019t tell me you lack the time. You need the practice. \u201dWhen he did not approach, she persisted. \u201cScared?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d he laughed. Yes, he thought.<\/p>\n

He had torn himself away from that conversation to continue the fire walk for fear of losing his fragile restraint. Not now. Not yet.<\/p>\n

So while she sang, he paced that routine progress, ensuring that torches would not spark any mishaps, that candles burned within the spheres prescribed, that everything was in its right place.<\/p>\n

He had led these survivors through a hostile winter and a dispiriting spring. Just as they had begun to define a possible departure, a visit from the mage sent him scrambling in another direction. Tomorrow he would slip away and venture north to pursue the vision his teacher had given him.<\/p>\n

The day will come, Cal-raven, when you\u2019ll have no choice but to leave Scharr ben Fray\u2019s imagination behind and live in the real world. His father\u2019s fury buzzed in his ear like a skeeter-fly. If you don\u2019t, the ground will crumble beneath you.<\/p>\n

Facing his father\u2019s likeness, Cal-raven felt his throat tighten. \u201cWhose inventions plunged into the earth?\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to me, boy!You\u2019re too old for toys.Who will lead the people when I\u2019m gone? Someone whose head is full of children\u2019s stories?<\/p>\n

\u201cShow me someone better prepared for the task,\u201d he said. \u201cI do not enjoy the burdens you\u2019ve left me. \u201dHe took the shield from where it was draped over the shoulder of the king\u2019s likeness.<\/p>\n

The statue\u2019s lips were parted, and a strange feeling of discomfort crept up Cal-raven\u2019s spine. He did not know what scared him more\u2014the thought of the stone speaking or the thought that his dreams might prove false.<\/p>\n

Hagah\u2019s inquisitive nose bumped the edge of Cal-marcus\u2019s shield, and he woofed.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not waiting for him anymore, are you?\u201d<\/p>\n

A rough tongue exploded from the hound\u2019s expansive smile, and his tail thumped against the floor.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve given up on them both.\u201d Cal-raven\u2019s gaze strayed to the statue of his mother. The runaway.<\/p>\n

It was a good likeness, or so he\u2019d been told. Jaralaine\u2019s appearance seemed an echo lost in time\u2019s clamor. But troubled scowls from older folk told him that they recognized this imperious beauty. He did remember occasional tenderness and sighs of insatiable loneliness before her disappearance. He also remembered a fury against any suggestion of a will greater than her own.<\/p>\n

He found himself suspended between the gravity of these statues and the forested world beyond, which called to him like a feast to a starving man.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all ready to be runaways now, Mother. If we don\u2019t leave soon, the bonds that bind us will break.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hagah sniffed the base of the queen\u2019s statue.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo!\u201d Cal-raven shouted.<\/p>\n

Disappointed, the dog lumbered off through the rows to settle on the lanky figure of a hunter known by his nickname\u2014Arrowhead.<\/p>\n

Go ahead, Cal-raven thought. Arrowhead was a grudger. He threatened my father\u2019s life. Wouldn\u2019t hurt him to take some abuse for a change.<\/p>\n

Hagah would have merrily complied, but the sound of something slithering sent him bounding back to Cal-raven\u2019s boots, fangs shining beneath his retracting lip. Cal-raven blew out and dropped the candle, held his father\u2019s shield close, and knelt to withdraw the throwing knife at his ankle.<\/p>\n

There was only silence. Cal-raven tiptoed through the statues, Hagah stalking low before him.<\/p>\n

The dog led him to the western wall, where a corridor ran along the inside of the cliff. Hagah put his snout down to a crack in the floor, noisily drawing in air. His tail stopped wagging.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat have you found, boy?\u201d<\/p>\n

Hagah stiffened. Then he began to back away from the fissure, a low, rolling growl changing into a worried squeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething nasty?\u201d Scars like burns from rivulets of hot oil marked the floor all about the break. \u201cLet\u2019s go. This place is giving me jitters tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

A puff of wind touched his ear and then\u2013\u2013thung! He turned to see an arrow embedded in the wall beside his head.<\/p>\n

He sprang forward, leaping over the dog, and ran through the corridor. Down the stairs. Through tiers of tunnels.<\/p>\n

In the distance Lesyl sang the Evening Verse. But his pursuer\u2014pursuers, he could hear their footsteps now\u2014did not falter.<\/p>\n

Hagah turned around snarling. \u201cNo!\u201d Cal-raven knew the dog was no match for an arrow. \u201cRun, boy!\u201d He pointed, and the dog bolted ahead just as he had been trained.<\/p>\n

Cal-raven did not follow. He faced the rugged wall, placing his hands against the rock. His fingertips sought hidden inconsistencies, and finding those points, he applied pressure and heat in a way he could never explain.<\/p>\n

The stone awakened, rippling in a sudden wind.<\/p>\n

Cal-raven\u2019s body clenched like a fist, forcing energy out through his hands. Then he pressed himself through the wavering curtain.<\/p>\n

A midsummer evening\u2019s breeze cooled his burning face as the sand sealed itself behind him.<\/p>\n

The grudgers are out of patience. He brushed grit from his garments. It would not take long for his hunters to find their own exit. They were watching.Waiting for me to be alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cKeeper, protect me,\u201d he murmured. Crouching, he moved away from the cliffs into narrow paths through thorn-barbed thickets that blanketed the plains.<\/p>\n

Several turns into that maze, he sat down to catch his breath. I must get back inside where it\u2019s crowded.<\/p>\n

He thought about standing up and calling for the guards on the tiers above. But they would not see him here in the brake. And what else might come in answer?<\/p>\n

A strange wind moved through the shallow sea of thorns. Bramble bugs skrritch-skrritched across the plains. Something wriggled under his foot. He set his father\u2019s shield aside, tugged off his boot, and shook loose a rock spider.<\/p>\n

He looked up through the brambled frame. A shooting star scratched a line across the night\u2019s black dome. As if excited by the mysterious sign, faraway wood dogs shrieked in song.<\/p>\n

When he jerked his sleeve free of a bramble and stood, his rustling stirred up a cloud of twilight-suckers. These insects were always a help to hunters, for they uttered tiny shrieks of delight as they descended on fresh dung or carrion.<\/p>\n

Sure enough, as the pest cloud dissipated, he saw two copper coins. He knew that reflective stare from a hundred hunts. A lurkdasher. A year ago the sight of this swift, bushy-tailed creature would not have surprised Cal-raven. Lurkdashers were common burrowers in beds of brush. But Abascar\u2019s best hunters had been catching little more than weakened scavengers, rodents lean for lack of prey. Across the Expanse the land had gone quiet, as if emptied by some mass migration.<\/p>\n

If Cal-raven had been out for any other purpose, he\u2019d have thrown his knife so fast the dasher would have fallen mid sprint. But he stayed still. Something wasn\u2019t right.<\/p>\n

The lurkdasher vanished. Cal-raven stood in the quiet, just another secret in this complicated night.<\/p>\n

Then he felt a chill. He could sense a presence, fierce and intent.<\/p>\n

He turned his head slightly and drew in a deep breath. Only a stone\u2019s throw to his right an enormous animal, many legged, lurked in the thick web of boughs. He held that breath and waited, eyes slowly translating the contours of darkness and deeper darkness all around him.<\/p>\n

Like a mighty hand, the creature clutched the ground, tensing knuckled legs. The bushes around it shivered as the lurkdasher stole away, and like a spider the creature raised two of its front legs from the brambles, bracing the other five against the ground. It was as big as a fang bear. Cal-raven felt a faint tremor. Then he heard a hiss, and the creature shifted its weight slightly, turning those raised limbs toward him.<\/p>\n

Considering the sword at his side, he flexed his hand.<\/p>\n

A crush of branches sounded to his left. His heart fluttered, a trapped bird, frantic. He turned and saw the second creature\u2014the very same kind\u2014with its feet planted as if it might pounce. In terrified confusion he saw the wind disturb a canvas that the creature drew behind it, a dark black sheet covering the thorns.<\/p>\n

He did not know these monstrosities. They looked like they could outrun a viscorcat. And the forest was a long, long run ahead of him through a narrow, winding passage that he could not see clearly. But the cliffs\u2014he might just make it back to the wall. The solid stone wall.<\/p>\n

Ever so slowly he planted his hand on the hilt of his sword. He stepped backward, placing his foot down soundlessly.<\/p>\n

The creatures stood as still as sculpted metal.<\/p>\n

He took another step, drawing his sword half out of its scabbard. No, he thought. The starlight. They\u2019ll see the reflection.<\/p>\n

At his third step the creature on the right planted its two raised feet down on the ground, digging in as if it might spring.<\/p>\n

He heard movement behind him and felt a blast of air like a bellows. His feeble hopes went out. But something deeper than his mind, stronger than his will, unleashed a cry. He called out, as he had so many times in nightmares, for the Keeper.<\/p>\n

The creatures leapt from the brambles and seized him. His sword never escaped the scabbard.<\/p>\n

He had a moment to think of Lesyl, interrupted in her song, looking up to receive unexpected news, the hewson-pipe coiled beside her.<\/p>\n

Hot limbs wrapped around him, and his feet left the ground. The creatures were shelled, bone-tough, their bellies cushioned with bundles of hair. He struggled, limbs flailing. He was falling skyward, upside down. The pressure did not increase. Nothing pierced or stung or bit. The ground, faintly chalked in moonlight, spread like the sky over his head, and beyond his feet the heavens glittered like Deep Lake at midnight. The creatures held him suspended, their vast canvases snapping in the wind as if they were wings.<\/p>\n

And then he saw that they were wings, spread out from a towering creature.<\/p>\n

His captors were not animals at all but hands. He hung unharmed in the clawed clutches of a monster and was carried up toward its massive equine head.<\/p>\n

Its eyes, glassy spheres full of stars, were fixed upon the northern horizon. Flames lined its nostrils. Its mane wavered as if it were creating, not surrendering to, the night wind. And the scales on its golden neck caught more than moonlight.<\/p>\n

A helpless toy in its hands, he watched its attention turn to him, and his fear turned to confusion.<\/p>\n

He recognized this creature. This shape had been fixed in his mind since he first drew breath. It had moved at the edges of his dreams. In nightmares it had come when he cried out for help, and sometimes when he could not call at all. During the long days of learning, he had pillaged his father\u2019s history scrolls and hunting journals for evidence.<\/p>\n

Nothing had prepared him for this. The creature drew in a cavernful of air, the shield-plates of its chest separating to reveal a soft lacework beneath. It held that breath. He knew it was reading him, reading the night, the skies. Then the curtains of its eyelids came down.<\/p>\n

Are you kind? he thought. Dreams\u2026speak true. Let the Keeper be kind.<\/p>\n

The creature was stranger than anything he had sculpted when imagining its shape and dimensions. He felt embarrassed by his simplistic appeals, his feeble prayers. He was a mouse in the talons of a brascle, and as the creature reared up on the pillars of its hind legs, wing upon wing upon wing unfolding from its sides like sails on a great ship, he waited for judgment.<\/p>\n

A sound like deep recognition ran tremulous through its form. Calraven thought it spoke his name\u2013\u2013not the name given by his mother, but the name given by the powers that had crafted him\u2014and every thread of his being burned with attention. As the eyes opened again, the stars within were moving.<\/p>\n

It exhaled a scattering of sparks, but gently. The sound was like the Mystery Sea, roaring as it received the river flowing out through the Rushtide Inlet.<\/p>\n

The air about the creature shuddered. A wave of noise beyond the range of Cal-raven\u2019s hearing stunned him, conveying a word as clearly as if the creature had spoken. He would not, in the aftermath, know how to translate such a word. But it provoked in him an immediate resolve, a reverent promise.<\/p>\n

He would follow. What else could one do when commanded by the Keeper?<\/p>\n

Smoke and spice clouded the air and dizzied him. He was passed from clawed hands at the edges of the creature\u2019s wings to one of its enormous, rough-fleshed feet, which held him like a woman\u2019s hand cradling a bird. The creature set him down within a footprint on the path, and a wind whirled fiercely about him. Squinting up through the storm, he saw that the creature had taken flight.<\/p>\n

In the space of a sigh, it was gone, a succession of lights darkening across the sky, northward over the Cragavar forest. Cal-raven lay helpless and numb like a discarded doll in the Keeper\u2019s footprint.<\/p>\n

Breath burst back into his lungs. He heaved, folding and fighting, a bird shaking away the shards of a shell.<\/p>\n

It came when I called.<\/p>\n

Never more invigorated, never more single-minded in purpose, he smiled back toward the cliffs. He had been changed.<\/p>\n

In that moment everything changed for House Abascar as well. It began with a jolt, not a tremor.<\/p>\n

Tabor Jan had been yawning as he reclined atop a boulder and counted the brightening stars. Sleep, out of reach for many nights, had seemed almost possible.<\/p>\n

But then the ground beneath him bucked like a furious steed.He scrambled to the path, unsheathing his sword as if he might smite the earth in reprimand. From deep within Barnashum came a sound like hundreds of drums. The shaking intensified. The refuge exhaled clouds of dust through shielded entryways.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot part of the plan,\u201d he muttered.<\/p>\n

Rubble spilled down the cliffs in the quiet that followed, dust sighing into the thickets below.<\/p>\n

\u201cCal-raven,\u201d he said. Another name came to mind. Brevolo.<\/p>\n

Then came a distant cacophony of voices. Rivers of people were rushing out onto the open ledges.<\/p>\n

Even as he scanned the scene for the woman he loved, Tabor Jan pushed his way through the crowds, shouting to soldiers that their first priority was to find Cal-raven.<\/p>\n

Hagah bounded suddenly into Tabor Jan\u2019s path. The soldier seized the dog\u2019s flabby neck. \u201cHagah\u2014Cal-raven!\u201d<\/p>\n

Thrilled by the command, the dog turned as if jerked by a chain and almost threw himself off the cliffs. It was all the captain could do to keep up with him.<\/p>\n

He found himself running toward the sound of triumphant yelps beyond the base of the cliffs. Dog had found master. The king was alive.<\/p>\n

Kneeling among the brambles, Cal-raven embraced Hagah, blinking as if he\u2019d been knocked silly by a falling stone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you hurt?\u201d Tabor Jan scanned the shadowed ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t you see it?\u201d Cal-raven pointed north toward the Cragavar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSee it? I felt it. I think they may have felt it in Bel Amica. We may have cave-ins. I\u2019m taking you back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, not the quake,\u201d said Cal-raven, exhilarated. \u201cDidn\u2019t you see it?\u201d<\/p>\n

Tabor Jan braced himself. \u201cSee\u2026what?\u201dThen the exuberance of Calraven\u2019s<\/p>\n

expression triggered a spasm of alarm. \u201cNo! Don\u2019t say it!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut Tabor Jan, I saw\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSwallow that story, my lord!\u201d He would have preferred a beast man sighting. \u201cDon\u2019t speak of it to the people. Especially not tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNot tonight! What could bring them more comfort than to hear\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the grudgers hear you respond to this quake with some wild description of a phantom on our doorstep\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGrudgers attacked me tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you see their faces?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, but I became acquainted with their arrows.\u201d He laughed. \u201cI also became quite familiar with the Keeper. Nose-to-nose, in fact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tabor Jan scowled. \u201cI haven\u2019t slept for so long I\u2019m having nightmares while I\u2019m awake.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt pointed me north, Tabor Jan! We\u2019ve got to ride\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll ride tomorrow, Cal-raven. Just as you planned.\u201d He urged Cal-raven back toward the cliffs, and they clambered over piles of rubble newly shaken from the heights. A tumult of voices filled the sky.<\/p>\n

Hurrying down a steep ridge, an enormous guard came stumbling to meet them.<\/p>\n

\u201cBowlder, how many are hurt?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCave-in!\u201d he wheezed. \u201cMust\u2026dig out\u2026three people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI assume you\u2019ve called for Say-ressa. Without her healing hands we\u2026\u201d Tabor Jan stopped, stricken as he read Bowlder\u2019s expression.<\/p>\n

He turned to Cal-raven, but the king was strangely preoccupied with the moon above the northern horizon.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

MY REVIEW:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately I have not had a chance to read Raven’s Ladder<\/a> yet. I can say that if it is anything comparable to Auralia’s Colors it will be a magical experience. I plan to participate in the Revell blog tour for Raven’s Ladder<\/a> in March, so look for a review at that time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-fantasy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3929"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3969,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3929\/revisions\/3969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.daysongreflections.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}