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Raven: The First Bird of Prey

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BfK No. 93 - July 1995

Cover Story
July's front cover features the hardback version of Paula Danziger's Thames Doesn't Rhyme with James, using an illustration by Joe Csatari. The book is published by Heinemann and we're grateful to them for their help. For further details see the Authorgraph interview with Paula Danziger.

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Raven: The First Bird of Prey

Anthony Masters
(Puffin Books)
978-0140362947, RRP £3.99, Paperback
14+ Secondary/Adult
Buy "The Raven: First Bird of Prey" on Amazon

Imagine a mixture of Hitchcock's Birds and Garner's Owls and you'll get the drift - a rivetingly gruesome story which begins in AD 842 with the execution, by stoning, then the burying alive of the magician, Gelert. Feared by the villagers, Gelert is accused of spreading plague to the Welsh village with his birds and of stealing their talisman, the wooden dove. Centuries later, following the flooding of the valley for a dam, Hugh Ellis is showing the borough surveyor the ruined walls and the chapel, and speaks of the curse that was supposed to be on the valley. The action then moves to 1992 when a corpse is discovered in a bog - curled up and foetus-like, 'a bit like a tandoori chicken'. Gelert's spirit begins to possess Hugh - and the ravens are always circling, watching...

Reviewer: 
Val Bierman
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