A summary of Tatyana Korsakova’s "The Raven’s Chase"

Tatyana Korsakova’s novel "Crow’s Chase," published in 2018, is a mystical detective story with thriller elements. Its key feature is its interweaving of modern human tragedies with ancient Siberian legends about the mysterious Crow Tower and a mystical force that punishes sinners. The plot revolves around the gathering of an unusual expedition, organized by a mysterious, influential employer through the clerk Yakov Isaakovich Nikopolsky. The lawyer finds people who have experienced severe life crises and offers them a contract with a generous reward. Each participant must travel into the remote taiga to the abandoned village of Sosnovy, where the estate of gold miner Ignat Goryaev once vanished without a trace.

Gathering of expedition participants

Lawyer Nikopolsky consistently finds future team members who have found themselves in desperate situations. The first is Arkhip Beloborodov, a former gamekeeper hiding from his past in a monastery as a novice. Nikopolsky presents him with a list of project participants, where Arkhip sees a familiar name, forcing him to immediately agree to the contract. The gamekeeper connects his sins to a tragedy that occurred ten years ago.

The next recruit is video blogger Ilya, known online by the pseudonym Leshy. His successful channel about abandoned places was subjected to a massive hater attack, causing him to lose both audience and advertisers. Nikopolsky offers him a large sum and exclusive content to revive the channel.

The lawyer then hires Anzhelika Stepantsova, the thirty-year-old widow of an elderly wealthy man. Her late husband’s relatives accused her of adultery, providing irrefutable evidence, and evicted her from her home without an inheritance. Anzhelika tries to start over, but faces a harsh reality. At a café, she saves a three-year-old child from being hit by a minibus, which literally collides with an invisible wall and crashes into a pole. Leshy films the incident on his phone and posts it online, making Anzhelika the target of unwanted publicity. Nikopolsky invites her to join an expedition, promising to resolve her problems with a blackmailing blogger and return a family heirloom — an antique silver ring that Leshy picked up at the scene of the accident.

The fourth participant is cook Marfa Zvonareva. She was cruelly deceived by the marriage swindler Mikhail Koretsky, who forced her to sell her apartment, pawn her mother’s family ring, and take out huge loans before disappearing. Left penniless in a dorm, Marfa commits petty theft at work and is fired with a black mark. Nikopolsky offers her a job as the expedition’s personal chef with a huge advance that covers all her debts.

Rescuing Elsa

The project’s key figure is Elsa, a young, freckled artist with emerald eyes. After divorcing her husband, surgeon Nikita Bystrov, she fell under the care of a greedy relative, Janusia. Nurse Janusia unofficially kept Elsa in a mental hospital, drugged her with powerful narcotics, and confiscated her brilliant paintings, which were then sold at European auctions under the assumed name of Max Klyuchnikov. Elsa needed the pills to escape terrifying hallucinations: she was haunted by black birds and a sinister Black Man in a plague doctor mask.

Nikopolsky recruits Nikita Bystrov, the region’s top surgeon, to the project, appealing to his guilt over his ex-wife. Nikita, along with his friend and addiction specialist Ilya Steshkov, picks up the exhausted Elsa from her filthy apartment and takes her to a country house for detoxification.

During treatment, a huge flock of crows attacks the house, smashing into the windows and leaving bloody trails. Nikita realizes that Elsa’s visions are not the delusions of a drug addict, but a terrifying reality. Elsa attempts to escape into the forest, where she is once again pursued by the crows. Nikita finds her under a century-old oak tree and places the engagement ring with the gray stone, returned by Nikopolsky, on her finger. At that moment, the stone changes color to green, Elsa utters a spell in an unknown language, and hundreds of birds fall dead to the ground. Epidemiologist Vladimir Zimin, having examined the carcasses, concludes that the healthy birds died from massive vascular rupture caused by the shock wave.

Nikita finds a note from his deceased neighbor, Serafima Askoldovna, who many years ago gave him the protective ring for Elsa. Realizing the danger threatening the girl, Nikita signs the contract and joins the expedition as a doctor. Elsa secretly leaves with Nikopolsky to avoid endangering Bystrov’s life. She realizes that it was her purified consciousness that opened the secret door to the world of the Black Man.

Collision in the park and departure

Before leaving, Marfa Zvonareva encounters her abuser, Mikhail, in the city park. The con man punches her in the nose and tries to escape. Marfa runs after him to a pond, where a mystical darkness suddenly descends. Mikhail pushes Marfa into the water, and a faceless Black Man appears on the shore. Wild ducks begin to drown Marfa, preventing her from surfacing. She is saved by an unknown bearded man in camouflage, who severely beats Mikhail and takes his passport. Rescued, Marfa takes the man home, dries his clothes, and feeds him cutlets. On his arm, she sees a tattoo of thorny branches and a key. Before dawn, the man leaves, and Marfa sees from the window the Black Man with a sickle approaching. However, the bearded man is oblivious to the danger, and the monster disappears after the woman’s desperate scream.

Supply manager Semyon Mikhailovich, who lost his beloved wife Valentina a year ago, organizes the train’s departure. Marfa, Elsa, and her black cat, Zena, share a compartment. The women quickly find common ground. At a stopover, Nikita Bystrov joins them, determined to protect Elsa to the end.

At the next point on the route, the team is joined by Angelica and her new pet, a white lab rat, and the blogger Leshy, from whom Angelica immediately takes back her ring, forcibly putting the blogger back in his place. Leshy tells the team the story of the Raven Tower, built by gold miner Ignat Goryaev, who hid his riches there and vanished without a trace along with his entire household. Since then, anyone who has tried to find this place has either died or returned insane, making a circular route through the taiga.

The ending of the first part

The entire team arrives in the village of Lesnoy and settles in at Granny Malanya’s farmstead. The old woman recognizes Elsa and tells her that ten years ago, her father, Pyotr, was killed in the taiga, and that Elsa herself, small and frightened, was carried out of the forest by a bloodied man.

At that moment, a terrible storm descends upon the farmstead. A black man in a plague doctor’s mask, Raven, leading Raven’s pursuit, attacks the hut. Thousands of birds batter the windows, shattering the enchanted glass. Elsa, Marfa, and Angelica stand in a row at the window and hold back the onslaught of darkness with their palms. The stone on Angelica’s ring and the symbols on Elsa’s ring begin to glow. At that moment, men rush toward the farmstead in a minibus, along with Arkhip Beloborodov, armed with a rifle. Together, they manage to drive off the flock, and the yard is littered with dead birds.

Elsa, looking at Arkhip Beloborodov, suddenly recalls the events of her childhood. She is overcome with rage, and with an unknown force, she hurls the enormous huntsman against the log wall. Baba Malanya stops the girl, announcing to everyone present that Elsa has finally remembered the truth: Arkhip Beloborodov is her father’s killer. However, the old woman adds that Arkhip cannot be killed, as he is the only one who knows the whole truth about the secrets of the Raven Tower. The story ends at the moment of the shared understanding that all participants are bound by long-standing blood ties.