Antonia Hodgson is a novelist, screenwriter, and former Editor-in-Chief at Little, Brown UK. The Devil in Marshalsea, her debut historical crime novel, won a CWA Historical Dagger Award in 2014, was shortlisted on Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year, and became a Waterstone’s Book Club pick. Despite her success with historical crime and mysteries, Hodgson’s first love is the fantasy genre, which she returns to with the Eternal Path Trilogy. The Raven Scholar (2025) is the first installment.

In many interviews, Hodgson has stated that her idea for the Eternal Path Trilogy came from her interest in animal symbolism, leading her to create a world where animals and humans are representations of each other in many ways. The intersection between human characters and their animal Guardians is evident in the fight platform scenes throughout the novel. These scenes reveal aspects of a character’s personality and their common traits with the animal Guardian they serve. Such scenes also play with point-of-view and shift into “folk tale” moments where certain Guardians are introduced.

Hodgson also plays with point-of-view in the narrative. By positioning the opening chapters through what the narrative suggests is Yana’s point of view, she invites readers to form ideas of what they think is going to happen, just before she switches things in Part 2 to follow Neema, then switching one final time to the omniscient POV of the Raven. Hodgson has stated the raven is a story bird, always alert and aware of everything going on around it. The symbolism of ravens says they are affiliated with the past and the future, thus further reinforcing the sense of the Raven as an all-knowing force in the text.

The Raven Scholar is an amalgamation of many elements, such as political epic fantasy, murder-mystery, and dark academia. In this regard, The Raven Scholar shares characteristics with other contemporary fantasy novels such as R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War and Sarah J. Maas’s House of Earth and Blood.