Black Wings Beating

I was really not feeling this one. The descriptions of falconry sounded horrible, veering into animal cruelty. It was immediately off putting that our introduction to the main characters was while taking their tethered bird to compete in a fighting pit. I thought I'd give it more of a chance, maybe there'd be a redemption arc involving releasing the captured birds at some point? The twin's mother spends the book telling them to release the birds, because she believes that what they're doing is wrong. But they just treat her like she's in some kind of bird liberation cult and everyone else goes on their merry way capturing, fighting, racing, hunting or whatever the heck else you do with birds. Anyway, the actual plot is about hunting down a giant telepathic eagle, that for some unexplained reason is the key to winning a war.

Also, all of the bird metaphors got really old real fast.

And the audiobook narrator did these really insane bird caws, which made me think whole sentences must have been written like “Caw caw caw caw caw SCREECH.”