Catan: The Order of The Ravens

Little did I know that when I posted my review of Catan: The Novel I was entering the big time of microcelebrity book review stardom. 

I joke, but that is one way of explaining how I came to receive my copy of Catan: The Order of The Ravens and be able to post this review prior to the release of the novel’s English translation! As luck would have it, one of the marketing team members at Blackstone saw my review, and reached out a couple of months ago to ask if I would be interested in receiving and reviewing an advanced readers copy of Catan: The Order of The Ravens. Thank you, Blackstone, for the advanced copy! 

Despite the fact that I received this book free from the publisher, I will not let that color my review of the novel. Without further ado, let’s jump in! 

Author: Klaus Teuber

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing

Pages: 468

Plot: 5/5

Writing Quality: 4/5

Strength of Characters: 5/5

Review:

As I mentioned in my review of Catan: The Novel, some of my favorite memories from growing up were playing Catan with friends on Friday nights after school. So, I’m pretty much the target audience that Klaus Teuber had in mind when he was writing a series of novels that would dive deep into the lore of what Teuber imagined the island of Catan would be like. As a result, I deeply enjoyed The Order of The Ravens, and I think it is on par with The Novel even if it is a dreaded middle novel in a trilogy. 

The story starts 17 years after the events after the first book, showing the reader what the island of Catan is like after a generation of children have come of age knowing only the island as their home. The main characters from the first novel are still present in the story, but in secondary roles as we follow the perspectives of Jora, the daughter of Asla and Thorolf, Leif, the firstborn son of Thorolf, and Caven, a thrall hoping to escape his servitude in the Viking settlement of Woodhaven. 

My favorite aspect of this book was seeing how the different societies on Catan emerge and interact with one another. Ryansville, the settlement formed by escaped slaves, understandably develops into a society with a much different economy, government, and culture than that of Woodhaven, the settlement formed by the Vikings. The book also explains some of the plot holes that I felt were missing from the first book (how could a wolf find its way to an isolated island in the ocean anyway?). In a way, Catan: The Order of The Ravens is like a LitBG (like LitRPG, but instead of drawing from elements of role-playing games, it draws from elements of board games! Yes, I did make that up on the spot). The elements of the board game are all there, we see the importance of the characters discovering new resources and building trading relationships with each other, and the devastation that a robber can do to a settlement, but Teuber builds an intriguing world from those pieces that almost makes you wish the board game had such depth to it! 

What I did not like about The Order of The Ravens, is Klaus Teuber’s use of sexual assault as a plot device multiple times in the novel. Teuber uses characters committing sexual assault to convey their evil nature, and he also uses the different community’s reactions to a character committing sexual assault as a way of showing how the community’s are culturally different. I can see the intent, but there are other ways to convey character traits and cultural differences that avoid such uncomfortable passages in the text and are ultimately less stressful for certain audiences to read. Outside of this complaint, I think the novel is otherwise good and worth reading. 

Overall, fans of fantasy novels with realistic settings and fans of the Catan board game series will find Catan: The Order of The Ravens to be an enjoyable read that develops a tabletop classic into an exciting world of adventure. While possible, I do not recommend reading this novel without first reading Catan: The Novel. The time jump between the books means the stories aren’t inseparably linked together, but readers will benefit from the context of the first book before jumping into the sequel. 

Catan: The Order of The Ravens releases on October 7th, 2025. You can pre-order a copy here: https://www.blackstonepublishing.com/products/book-hgj4?variant=45520533782666