Not all the witches burned during the Salem witch trials. Now, generations later, their descendants protect their ancient secrets. An Unkindness of Ravens tells the story of Wilma, a teenage girl who gets caught up in the witchy ways of the Ravens.

An Unkindness of Ravens #4 cover featuring the four Ravens linking arms

Check out our review of An Unkindness of Ravens issue 4 below. (Need to catch up? Read about the first three issues here.)

An Unkindness of Ravens #4 Review

Alright, let’s just say it. Where the previous three issues of An Unkindness of Ravens held magic and mystery, issue #4 holds heavy exposition.

As a result, it’s kind of…meh.

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It’s one of those situations where the information is necessary… but you wish it had been delivered a little differently.

In this issue, Wilma finally learns Waverly is her sister. A totally necessary plot point, for sure. But the reveal gets pretty dragged out. First the Ravens confront Wilma at school and sort of hint at her relationship to Waverly. This leads to Wilma confronting her father, who eventually confirms they’re sisters.

From the reader’s perspective, this just doesn’t work that well. Since we already had Wilma and Waverly’s relationship confirmed for us, this issue loses pretty much all of its dramatic tension. The sort of arc this follows – where Wilma follows a trail of breadcrumbs to get new information – really only works when we’re following along trying to piece together the puzzle too. (I’m mixing my metaphors here, but you get the idea.) Having conversations with both her father and the Ravens to learn something we the audience already knew made this issue drag and feel a bit redundant.

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Basically, An Unkindness of Ravens issue #4 felt incredibly exposition heavy. There wasn’t much mystery OR magic, which made it a lot less interesting than its predecessors. Still, I don’t think this is a bad sign for the series as a whole. I feel like with this bit of exploratory plot taken care of, we can expect things to get more interesting again in the next issue.

An Unkindness of Ravens #4 is available now from Boom! Studios.