The Serpent's Shadow (The Elemental Masters) [School & Library Binding]

M. Lackey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2002 | Series: The Elemental Masters

Maya Witherspoon had lived most of the first twenty-five years of her life in her native India. As the daughter of a prominent British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste, she had known only luxury. Trained by her father in the medical arts since she was old enough to read, she graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine by the age of twenty-two. Welcomed into her father’s lucrative practice, she treated many of the wives and daughters of the British military personnel who made up a large percentage of their patients in the colonial India of 1909.

But the science of medicine was not Maya’s only heritage. For Maya’s aristocratic mother Surya, had not just defied her family, friends and religion to marry Maya’s father, she had turned her back on her family’s powerful magical traditions as well. For her mother was a sorceress—a former priestess of the mystical magics fueled by the powerful and fearsome pantheon of Indian gods.

Though Maya felt the stirring of magic in her blood, her mother had repeatedly refused to train her. “I cannot,” she had said, her eyes dark with distress, whenever Maya asked. “Yours is the magic of your father’s blood, not mine….” Surya had never had the chance to explain this enigmatic statement to her daughter, before cholera claimed her life. Yet Maya suspected that something far more sinister than the virulent disease had overcome her powerful mother.

But it was Maya’s father’s death shortly thereafter which confirmed her darkest suspicions. For her father was killed by the bite of a krait, a tiny venomous snake, and in the last hours of her mother’s life, in the seeming delirium of her fever, Surya had repeatedly warned Maya to beware “the serpent’s shadow.” With the sudden loss of her father, Maya knew she must flee the land of her birth or face the same fate as her parents.

In self-imposed exile in London, Maya surrounded herself with every protection possible. All the magic Maya knew had been learned by covertly observing her mother, and by cobbling this knowledge together with the street-magic gleaned from a few genuine fakirs. Her workings were a mixture of instinct, extrapolation, and trial-and-error. Crude, but somewhat effective, her spells let Maya hide her household behind a wall of secrecy in a poorer section of the city. Here, in a small but adequate house she lived with only the most loyal of her mother’s servants, and her mother’s seven unusual “pets”—if you could use such a word for creatures who seemed far more like friends. For Charan, the little monkey, Rajah, the peacock, Mala, the falcon, Sia and Singhe, the mongooses, Rhadi, the parrot, and Nisha, the owl seemed far too sentient to be ordinary animals. Maya knew that these seven unusual and loving companions had been in some way special to her mother, but their secrets were hidden to her, perhaps forever.

In her new home she fought the dual prejudices against her sex and her race to continue in her medical profession. Only her high scholastic abilities and her extreme determination enabled her to meet with any success. She managed to place herself in a minor position at a prestigious hospital while she pursued her own medical passions: helping the poor at a tiny clinic where they welcomed any doctor, and setting up a small, controversial practice which specialized in “female complaints” and offered “absolute discretion.”

But Maya knew that she could not hide forever from the vindictive power which had murdered her parents. She knew in her heart that even a vast ocean couldn’t protect her from “the serpent’s shadow” which had so terrified her mother. Her only hope was to find a way to master her own magic: the magic of her father’s blood. But who...

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Mercedes Lackey returns to form in The Serpent's Shadow, the fourth in her sequence of reimagined fairy tales. This story takes place in the London of 1909, and is based on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Lackey creates echoes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, pays affectionate homage to Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey (who plays an important role under a thin disguise), and turns the dwarves into seven animal avatars who masquerade as pets of her Eurasian heroine, Maya.

Some of Maya's challenges come from the fact that she is not "snow white," and she has fled India for her father's English homeland after the suspicious deaths of her parents. Establishing her household in London, she returns to her profession as a physician, working among the poor. Her "pets" and loyal servants stand guard, and Maya herself uses what bits of magic she managed to pick up in childhood to weave otherworldly defenses as well. But the implacable enemy who killed her parents has come to London to search for her; if Maya can be enslaved, her enormous potential powers can be used to the enemy's ends. Fortunately, English magicians of the White Lodge have also noted a new, powerful presence in their midst, though they're having trouble locating her, too. They send Peter Scott, a Water Master, to track her down. He finds Maya beautiful and benign, and is determined to teach her to use the Western magic she is heir to, before her enemy discovers her.

Some will find the author's Kiplingesque descriptions of India and Hindustani culture offensive. Lackey describes Maya's enemy as a powerful devotee of the goddess Kali-Durga, though she carefully shows that the avatars of the other deities will not attack her, and has Kali-Durga repudiate her servant in the climactic confrontation. And, though the story is layered, its surface is as glossy and brightly colored as an action comic. But readers who enjoy late Victorian London, Sayers, Sherlock Holmes stories, and a page-turning tale will want to take this one home. --Nona Vero --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

As a physician operating among London's poor in the early years of the 20th century, Dr. Maya Witherspoon has two strikes against her her gender and her status as the half-breed daughter of an Englishman and a Hindu woman. The magic she possesses, however, assists her not only in her work but also in fighting off an assassin bent on destroying her through the use of dark powers. The author of the popular "Valdemar" series turns her hand to historical fantasy in this intriguing and compelling re-creation of England in the waning days of its imperial glory. (This is also the first volume in a new three-book series inspired by classic fairy tales.) A good choice for Lackey's large readership as well as fans of period fiction.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• School & Library Binding: 400 pages
• Publisher: Turtleback Books: A Division of Sanval (March 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0613604407
• ISBN-13: 978-0613604406
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,966,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mercedes Lackey is the acclaimed author of over fifty novels and many works of short fiction. In her "spare" time she is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator. Mercedes lives in Oklahoma with her husband and frequent collaborator, artist Larry Dixon, and their flock of parrots.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant writing-a great tale, February 18, 2001

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters, Book 1) (Hardcover)

When the sun never set on Britannia, many disgruntled natives living in India turn to the dark side by worshipping the evil Goddess Kali-Purga. Most of the followers joined the deadly thugee cult, a group that used force to obtain their demands. Shivani is a high priestess who loathes the English. She uses her powers to kill her sister who had the audacity to marry a British doctor and to make matters worse, she had a daughter with the foreigner.

When Shivani murders her father, Maya flees India for the relative safety of London where she tends to the medical needs of the poor. Shivani follows her to London, planning to cause mass chaos, trepidation, and death in order to force the infidel English from her country. Shivani also plans to kill Maya, but that proves difficult as she is closely guarded and has own powers.

THE SERPENT'S SHADOW is a beautiful fantasy tale that leaves the audience believing in a happily ever after. Mercedes Lackey's latest novel will please romance fans as well. This adult fairy tale is brilliantly crafted just as the previous tale in this series, THE SUMMER RISE is. A secondary character deserves his story be told in a future edition. Recapture the innocence and pleasures of youth with this fabulous novel.

Harriet Klausner

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not This Misty Fan's Cup of Tea, August 5, 2001

By 

Alix Pascal - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters, Book 1) (Hardcover)

The Serpent's Shadow is, disappointingly, a jumbled rehash of Ms. Lackey's past work, material that has already been stretched thin. Where The Fire Rose (the first of her attempts to rewrite classic fairy tales) is fresh in its approach and stands as one of my all-time favorite books, The Serpent's Shadow struggles through a pale, undeveloped plot, see-through characters, and a villain that's absolutely ridiculous in her motivations and mannerisms. There's no element of surprise in this book whatsoever, and while Ms. Lackey's prose occasionally shines, it's all in a scene of a kind we've seen before from her.

(Example, from The Serpent's Shadow: "She liked his handshake; strong without being over-bearing, a warm, dry hand, neither too familiar nor too distant." And from The Fire Rose: "His grip was firm and quite strong, and she had the feeling that if she had not been wearing gloves, she would have found his hand to be warm, the skin of his palm dry.")

Ms. Lackey seems to be running out of steam and interest in her own topic throughout The Serpent's Shadow. The 400-page book leads up to a climax that is resolved in two pages, as if the author is as anxious to get to the book's end as the reader. While her characters are not completely devoid of personality, they're too one-sided -- the good guys are Beautiful People, kind, thoughtful, intelligent, witty, caring, etc, while the villains are motivated purely by greed or "evil"; after years of reading and admiring Ms. Lackey's work, I would very much like to see a villain that doesn't scowl and rely on "sex and blood magic" for his/her power. The book's primary villain, Shivani, is a pathetic caricature of a bad guy who brings the story to a lower, often eye-rolling level ("Then the campaign of terror would begin," we are told in one of Shivani's more melodramatic scenes; her reasons for playing a chess game of power and death are weak at best).

Coming after the brilliance of The Fire Rose, The Serpent's Shadow isn't much. Ms. Lackey contradicts the rules of Elemental magic that she herself set in the first book, where it had been established that Masters of the same element could not stay in the same vicinity without rivalries and difficulties. In London, where The Serpent's Shadow takes place, there is a whole club of Elemental Masters, who all seem to be living in the same city without any difficulty whatsoever.

The characters and plotline of this book leave much to be desired. Maya Witherspoon, the heroine, is basically flawless -- beautiful, an accomplished doctor and surgeon at twenty-five, a powerful mage, and of course, selfless and liberal-minded. Ms. Lackey often goes off on tirades, via her characters, about the cruel and repressive upper class and especially the malevolence of men, as well as the never-ending struggling of the downtrodden poor, and while these are valid and important points, after a while it feels like we're being preached at. Not to mention that she can't seem to think of any new male names (there are two Peters, a Paul like in The Fire Rose, and a Simon -- again used in The Fire Rose).

Maya's romantic interest is a Water Master (her Element is Earth; in The Fire Rose, the focus was on Air and Fire Masters), and from the moment we see him, it's obvious that they're intended to become romantically involved. There isn't any element of surprise whatsoever in The Serpent's Shadow, and from start to incredibly predictable ending, there isnt a moment that leaves one anxiously turning pages to see what will happen. Mayas story is supposed to be a retelling of Snow White, and Ms. Lackey throws in a few elements of the classic fairy tale -- magic mirror, seven guardians, poison, a life-saving kiss -- but never fully develops the parallel between the two stories. Her early twentieth-century London is never given much detail, though she will occasionally toss in a few British slang words as if to proudly prove that yes, she did her research, despite the fact that some readers might have no idea what shes talking about. And Mayas seven guardians -- the dwarf substitute -- are bound to offend some followers of Hinduism, as they are supposed to be the major Hindu gods -- given the form of pets. The gods dazzling histories and personalities, which might have added some spark to the book, are never explored at all; theyre used only as a convenient names to throw around.

The Serpents Shadow has a few well-written, fun scenes, and Elemental magic is an interesting topic in Ms. Lackeys hands. But the crumbling, transparent plot and pointless, shallowly crafted characters detract from what could have been a good book. For long-time Misty fans, The Serpents Shadow comes as a disappointment. Those seeking a masterful, magical retelling of a well-known fairy tale should look to Ms. Lackeys The Fire Rose, and not to this uninspired imitation.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a wonderful read, June 11, 2001

By 

tregatt (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Serpent's Shadow (Elemental Masters, Book 1) (Hardcover)

I found Mercedes Lackey's "The Serpent's Shadow" to be a really fun read. The best way to encapsulate this novel is to describe is as Dr. Bramwell (a PBS Masterpiece Theatre series about a female doctor in the early 1900s) meets Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The characters were all well developed and portrayed, and the whole plot premise, while it is an old one, and much used, came alive in a new and fresh manner under Ms Lackey's skilled hands. I read this novel in one go -- I just couldn't put this novel down. And while I'm quite a science fantasy fan, what I really liked about "The Serpent's Shadow" was the bits that dwelt with Maya's struggle to be a good doctor in the face of gender and racial prejudice. I think that Ms Lackey handled this theme very well, and very realistically. I also liked the subplot involving the Exeter Lodge, and their fastidious and rigid attitudes about 'aliens' -- i.e. women & foreigners. The frustration that Peter Cook, the Water Master, felt at the stubborn prejudices of the older and more aristocratic members, and their short sighted views on how to deal with the threat that Shrivani posed, was masterly portrayed. I'd also like to counter what a previous reviewer wrote about Ms Lackey and her negative depiction of Hinduism. I don't think that she did this at all. In all cultures and religions, there is good and evil. Ms Lackey depicted both aspects of this in this novel. The thing is the wicked stepmother in this novel is an Indian woman who is a practioner of one of the more destructive forms of Hinduism. And what I saw was how hate and the thirst for absolute power can pervert an individual's soul, in this case Shrivani's soul, rather than a indictmnet about the entire religion. And anyway it was Eastern forces that defeated Shrivani in the end, not Western one. So that you could sat that everything balanced out in the end.

"The Serpent's Shadow" is an excellent read and well worth recommending.