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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 (3,988 ratings, collected 2026-08-06)
Page count417
First-edition ISBN0-00-224644-9
First-edition date1999-07
Internal chronology10

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

One of 3732 works in the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.