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Book Review of Shadewright & Shadowslave (Shadewright Cycle, #1-2), by Dean McMillin

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I grabbed a copies of Shadewright and Shadowslave (by Dean McMillin) from the Amazon free list.

ShadewrightDescription from Goodreads:
Born with grey skin the color of lake clay, Phantist is an outcast from birth, shunned by the other children in the Orphan Asylum where he is raised. Then, during a solar eclipse, he witnesses a magnificent performance by Lasander Shadowmaster–a shadewright, sculptor of shadows.

When Phantist discovers that Lasander is a fellow greyskin, he finds his goal: he will become a Shadowmaster himself. His dream is to make an entire city hold its breath as his idol Lasander has done.

This quest leads him to the isolated village of Half Oak, where a strange cult holds sway, worshipping a voice in the earth: the Earth Darkness. The cult’s leader relays a deadly prophecy from his god-master:

“Everything you care about will be destroyed, greyskin. Everything and everyone. And it is all because of you. He wants you to know that. Because of YOU.”

Soon, Phantist is drawn into a web of plots and ambitions. He finds allies: Despanya, a greyskin who has forsaken shadow-sculpting to become a soldier; and Arick, a yellow-skinned master of lightning power whose childish nature belies dangerous abilities.

But the ever-present threat of Earth Darkness pursues them across the countryside. The very ground beneath their feet turns against them …

In the end, Phantist will face a grim choice that will determine the course of his life, and the fate of his world.

Review:
I was basically enjoying this. The writing is perfectly readable, though the editing starts to crumble a little after the halfway mark. (It’s noticeable, but not problematic.) And I’d probably give Arick a star or two all his own. He’s adorable, feels Asperger’s/Autistic-like. I even like that the main character has a tendency to be petty and proud. It’s annoying to read but he has flaws, which is so much better than a perfect Marty Stu.

However, I say, ‘was basically enjoying’ instead of ‘enjoyed’ because the plot barely gets started and then the book ends on a cliffhanger. While I assume the events leading up to Phantist’s quest aren’t random, they kind of feel like they are. He wandered into a random town, is picked out by a random enemy and randomly decides to be the hero. Maybe the next book will pull it more clearly together.

I will be reading the next. The writing is good enough, the characters interesting enough and I’m curious how it will end. But I also have a sneaky suspicious it won’t actually end. We’ll see.

Shadowslave

Description from Goodreads:
Phantist, the grey-skinned master of shadows, is summoned to the island of Arliss, a burnt-out ruin of a city where clues to the nature of the enemy beckon.

The house of Lasander– a deceased shadewright of great power, and Phantist’s greatest idol– lies there in a shadow-void, thrust down into shadow to save it from the flames of the earlier fire.

In the realm of the shadow-void, Phantist discover clues to the terrible truths of the conspiracy of the Earth Darkness to destroy his nation. He also attracts the attention of something dangerous. An ancient spirit of pure shadow-essence, feminine in form and highly seductive, who claims to exist to serve his needs, to be his “Shadow Slave.”

But she is vicious and jealous, and soon the lives of the two women Phantist loves are placed in terrible danger …

All the while, in the confines of a vast ruined cemetery on the city outskirts, the cult of the Earth Darkness is nurturing an ill brood. An infant god, nurtured on the essence of dead things and hatred, is about to emerge from his mortuary cradle to spread fear and death across the land … And only a master of shadows can track him down before it’s too late.

Review:
A good continuation to the story; the writing remains strong (though the editing still needs some attention), I still enjoy the characters, there is one heart-rending twist I didn’t see coming, the plot is still slowly developing. Honestly, it’s coming about at an agonisingly slow pace, but it would be unfair to claim I couldn’t see where it’s heading.

I do kind of  want to subtitle the book Shadowslave: Where Phantist Develops his Harem. Seriously, to a greater or lesser degree there’s Despanya, Cleo, the Shadowslave and Jenma, all wanting a part of Phantist. It gets to be a little too much and unless they come up in the latter books, both the Shadowslave and Jenma seem extraneous to the plot. (To be fair, I do expect Shadowslave to show back up.)

This one doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, but it’s very much a middle book (no real beginning or conclusion). All in all, a nice enough read that is compromised by its lack of an ending.

Prophecy Foretold

Book Review of Prophecy Foretold (The Prophecy Chronicles #1), by Ron Hartman

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Prophecy ForetoldAuthor, Ron Hartman sent me an ecopy of his novel, Prophecy Foretold, for review.

Description From Goodreads:
These are dark days for Naphthali. The king has been murdered, the land invaded by the Imperial Army. It will absorb Naphthali into an Empire that stretches across all of Enialé at any cost. The ravaged people cling to an ancient promise, an assurance that a prophesied savior will come to set them free.

Daniel Martin is trapped in a life that hasn’t gone as expected. His pharmacy is struggling and he is losing all hope of making a difference in his patients’ lives. His family is the one shining light in his disenchanted life, but he is torn from them when an accident draws him to Naphthali. The people need him, but Daniel is driven by his need to return to the family he loves. Is he the Prophesied One? Only time will tell as both the Empire and the Resistance battle for Daniel while the fate of Naphthali hangs in the balance…

Review:
*groan* I found this deeply dissatisfying. The writing was fine and, though I noticed a couple missing words and such, I had no complaints about the editing. I just plain found the whole thing dull, dull, dull.

Yes, there where plenty of skirmishes. Violence was a constant threat throughout the novel. But Daniel basically traveled for the course of the ENTIRE novel. I’m serious. He got picked up by one army, that schlepped him against his will in one direction. Then he got rescued by another one and marched the other direction. He was still dragging himself forward as the novel ended. He traveled from the beginning to the end of this book and when it looked like he might get where he was going and the story actually finally begin…the book ended. There was no payoff at all.

I can’t even say it was character driven and garner enjoyment in that manner. You don’t get to know anyone deeply because there is so little conversation. What’s more, the bad guys are very bad and the good guys are predominantly very good. No sense of moral ambiguity or grey to them.

As an example, every soldier of the opposing army is, without exception, is a raping, murderous villain. They kill indiscriminately and rape or threaten to rape every single woman they come across and we’re given a few near misses of raped children (both girls and boys). They are dysfunctional evil. By which I mean, a group of men can only commit so many open atrocities before even a cowed populace will risk death to rebel. These characters were so openly vile that they became caricatures of themselves and were utterly unbelievable. There was no depth to them at all.

All in all, Hartman can write and I appreciated that the hero was middle aged and out of shape (in other words, normal) but this book drags interminably. It just never picks up any speed. Though there is an interesting idea here, I have no interest in continuing the series.

Annoying closeup guy

This Week’s Reading Challenge: Annoying Close-Up Guy

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Annoying closeup guy

I own thousands of books…literally thousands. This means that, at any one time, choosing a book to actually read can be difficult. Like Barry Schwartz claimed in his book Paradox of Choice, more options can make decisions harder. So I spend a lot of time scrolling through my To Be Read list.

I do this on Goodreads, where I can see all the covers together. (I’m a visual creature after all.) I could just as easily do it in Calibre, but I like GR’s format. Some covers are more attractive than others. As it happens, I find the picture in the above covers particularly unappealing. I don’t know why, but I do. And, as all four of those books came from my TBR list, I own four books with essentially this same yucky cover. I see it all the freakin’ time, because it has four times the likelihood of popping up, even in a randomised order, than any other book I own. So, the repetition is unavoidable and unignorable.

[You see authors/publishers, this is why you shouldn’t use easily accessible stock photos on your covers. It annoys readers, because we notice and it just looks like you didn’t put much effort into it. This certainly isn’t the only cover photo I have several books using.]

In this case, I’ve decided to do something about the situation. And the obvious answer (besides just deleting them, which isn’t my style) is to read the suckers so they never show up in my TBR list again. I’m going to spend the coming week doing what I’ve deemed an ‘annoying closeup guy’ reading challenge. I’ll read all four books back-to-back.

And I know that from an author’s perspective, it may seem a good thing that the cover got their book read, but surely having a reader start out irked isn’t an ideal situation. Of course, I’m not going to allow this irritation to colour my reviews. They will be as honest about the good and the bad as any other.

Here are the books deets: