Raven's Ladder - Jeffrey Overstreet This book is wonderful. It was the first in the series that I read, because I didn't know when I bought it that it was part of a series at all; and despite not knowing what the heck was going on or who these people were or what the strange names meant, I was hooked.

Jeffrey Overstreet is a very good writer with an amazing cast of characters; I fell in love with Cal-raven at once and I wish he was around more. I don't get the beat-you-over-the-head Christian themes from this book that I get from a lot of others; in fact, from time to time he does seem to directly contradict Christian beliefs with the morals of his story. This book may as well not have the "Christian" tag on it at all, because I got nothing that way out of it. I enjoyed it because the story was good, the writing was good, the characters one and all are lovely, and because it doesn't pull any punches. It is definitely a young adult book, but there is no lack of action or pain, and the characters who have special powers use them, as opposed to so many books that employ different races or special abilities as a tag to make them interesting without actually displaying it more than the bare minimum.

I love this book, and I recommend it to everyone who is a fan of epic fantasy, no matter their religion.