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Cover of The Black Raven

The Black Raven

core novel 1999 Deverry

Record

First published1999
Original language EN
Work typenovel
Canon statuscore
Reader rating4.15 (3,992 ratings, collected 2026-09-13)
Page count417
First-edition ISBN0-00-224644-9
First-edition date1999-07
Internal chronology10

Synopsis

The second novel of the Dragon Mage act shifts between two timelines. During the Civil Wars, the apprentice Lilli uses her growing magical powers to protect Prince Maryn amid the shattered land of the Rhiddaer, her fate bound up in the outcome of the succession struggle threatening the kingdom. In a later era, in the city of Cerr Cawnen, the sorceress Raena awakens to pursue her long vendetta against Rhodry Maelwaedd, a grudge that has followed the two of them across more than one lifetime. As the narrative moves between these two periods, the reader sees how the unresolved tensions of Lilli's civil-war era continue to shape the dangers Rhodry and his companions face generations later, with Raena's reawakened hatred threatening to reopen old wounds that were never fully healed.

Where it sits

  • Universe: Deverry
  • Series: Act Three: The Dragon Mage core; position 2 of 3 in the series' recorded order
  • Author: Katharine Kerr

Notes

  • The 1998 publication year this project originally used conflated the real novel with a same-titled promotional excerpt bundled inside The Red Wyvern's 1998-09 Bantam Spectra paperback edition (ISFDB title record #2800991, "The Black Raven (excerpt)", SHORTFICTION -- not a separate publication of this novel at all). A targeted Round 3 re-check (2026-08-10) distinguished that excerpt record from the actual novel's own ISFDB title record, #19455, "The Black Raven" (Dragon Mage sub-series #2): first published 1999-07, first edition Voyager/HarperCollins (UK), ISBN 0-00-224644-9. This resolves the earlier open confidence question.
  • From the series record (Act Three: The Dragon Mage): Correction: this is a TRILOGY, distinct from the separate Act Four tetralogy (The Silver Wyrm), some casual summaries wrongly merge the two.

Recorded uncertainty

  • low confidence resolved: The Black Raven (Deverry) is registered in this project with a publication year of 1998, but a manual/human-assisted ISFDB browser pass (2026-08-10, Round 2 of the ISFDB manual pass) found ISFDB's own record for the complete first-edition novel dated 1999-07 (ISBN 0-00-224644-9); the browsing operator's own finding is that the 1997/1998 date this project's existing record is based on corresponds to a separate, shorter excerpt publication, not the complete novel.: A single ISFDB browsing session is not, by itself, enough to overturn an already-registered fact; this project requires two independent sources for that. So the publication year was deliberately left unchanged at 1998, pending a second source confirming which publication (the 1998 excerpt or the 1999-07 complete novel) the existing record is actually meant to date; the first-edition date and ISBN were left blank for the same reason, rather than attaching the 1999-07/ISBN-0-00-224644-9 pair to a record that still said 1998. A human was expected to re-confirm directly against ISFDB's own title/publication records for The Black Raven (the complete novel, not the excerpt) before this was closed either way. Resolved in Round 3 (2026-08-10): a targeted, source-distinguishing re-check found ISFDB actually holds two separate title records that Round 2's generic browse had conflated, title record #2800991, 'The Black Raven (excerpt)', a short-fiction promotional excerpt published inside the 1998-09 Bantam Spectra paperback edition of The Red Wyvern (not a real separate publication of this novel at all); and title record #19455, 'The Black Raven', the actual novel (Dragon Mage sub-series #2), first published 1999-07, first edition Voyager/HarperCollins (UK), ISBN 0-00-224644-9. Distinguishing two named ISFDB title records by hand is meaningfully stronger evidence than Round 2's single generic browse, so this was treated as resolved rather than re-flagged: the publication year is now recorded as 1999, with a matching first-edition date and ISBN.

Neighbouring works

Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.

Sources

← Deverry dossier · All universes

Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.