Feelings on book while reading: Asdfghjkl, this book is amazeballs to the sky, but oh my gersh Neryn, you are so naïve!
Feelings on book while a little more than half-way through: Aii! *kindly picture your potential mental image of me, quite honored to have a potential mental image incidentally, holding the book an arm's-length away with a stricken expression*
Feelings on book in the eponymous Shadowfell: *curled up with eyes moving like lightning*.
Feelings on book... At the denouément (Or whatever counts for it in this book): *hugs book to chest*.
Juliet Marillier is an author who wrote many books, among them which I have read Wildwood Dancing, and its premier companion Cybele's Secret. Thence I have gleaned her writing style to be heavy on character development, possibly more emotionally raw than other authors (many of whom I might name but I did say: "Rants of Opinionation" not "Calumny and vituperation"*), great at scenic detail, and fantastical situations abounding.
Three guesses.
1. All appear.
2. All appear with striking brilliance.
3. All appear with brilliance that yesterday demonstrated my ability to fangirl at length, and become overly wrapped up in a work of fiction†.
Ahem. All of the above. Rather then embark on a lengthy panegyric, why don't I explain what makes this book so utterly admirable?
Fifteen years before the book is set, a tyrant named Keldec takes power and bans all magic: both expunging particular talent in arts and crafts for fear of it being "canny" (for that is magic's name in this), and regularly destroying villages and settlements presumably to put the fear of the king in the citizens.N.B. A girl born in the year of King Keldec's coup, and running from the wrath of his "Enforcers" is a girl named Neryn (surname unspoken-of). Fleeing a village shortly before it is burned (See, she has all the bad luck. Her grandmother's mind was destroyed by Keldec's "mind-menders", her brother was killed in the destruction of their village, her mother died when she was four, and her father dies in the village's immolation.) with the help of an individual called Flint (Don't blame me, I didn't name those characters.) Naturally, she does not trust aforementioned individual and sets out solo to find Shadowfell, the legendary abode of those resistant to the king's rule.
If you're any connoisseur of the Y/A genre it should be a bit predictable as to the events of the book. If you're not, you aren't missing much, but the fun of guessing.
To be frank, I originally thought very little of this series. In the wake of our family watching Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings cinematic adaptations I thought this filled with terrible plagiarisms, and set it down after reading... five pages. Since then I have repeatedly critiqued it (with, mind you, little idea of its actual quality) but when I sighted it at the library, with the sequel I had to check it out again.
And, I loved it. Due to a variety of rare factors in Young Adult fiction known as good writing, fine characterization (and character-development, furthermore. This doesn't just go into flawed characters... flawed characters complete with backstory to demonstrate both their flaws and their merits still without weighing down the storyline, current actions demonstrating said flaws, and merits, as well as plenty of conflict just so those poor characters don't get a break. Maybe in the sequel☺?As a nice contrast I suspect these parenthetical statements are indubitably weighing down the review.)
Ah yes: Fine characterization, scenes to variously chill, hearten, or thrill the reader without burdening them with overly turgid phrasing, a - granted it is a cliché - rather, hm, trite storyline, and even at the end of it you want more to the story. Lucky Raven Flight is the present book of honor on my shelf, mm?
Then again, I had my prejudices against the characters, particularly Neryn. Concurred that she was a careful, defensive, weary, individual. Nevertheless, her trust of Flint grew rather too quickly. *nods*. Very quickly. And of course as anyone who has read to the middle of the novel understands, that trust is shattered like..... like.....a thousand tiny similes dashed upon a mirror, creating both a heck of a mess, a terrible comparison, and the cleaner wondering how a literary device can break a mirror♪.
Really, if they're all as terrible as that one I cannot admit to surprise.
Let's face it: It's an astounding book and you had better go out to your nearest bookstore to buy it. Or, rather not. In fact it is entirely your own choice to read it-let alone like it! Although I would recommend Cybele's Secret, and Wildwood Dancing, her two other Y/As. In very fact, my thanks for reading this review.
Anacostia Mirabow-Marignac.
*As many of them I probably unfairly dislike. Probably. Moreover, calumny is a fantastic word (meaning unfair or unjust criticism), which is potentially the root of my use.
†Hitherto unseen since my reading of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. The review is far too embarrassing to post on this blog, but I shall disclose my reading of it involved shrieking about the annoying characters, then bawling five minutes later. Uncontrollably. With great emotion.
♪If you're wondering about aforesaid event, you might search in the vicinity of the synopsis. I know. It's dreadfully helpful.
N.B. Of course, he could not have considered making people hate the magic rather than him. To cite Machiavelli, a monarch should be loved in peacetime, and feared in strife, but never, never to the point of hatred... Unlike Keldec. Oh, very much unlike Keldec.
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