Customer Reviews

In Shade and Shadow: A Novel of The Noble Dead

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've enjoyed the Noble Dead books so far in part because they aren't shiny, happy heroic fantasy with perfect heroes and implacable villians. Magerie, Leesil and Wynn have many virtues, but they aren't perfect, and Chane, Weistel and Aged Father all have reasons for the evil they do.

However, I think this most recent Noble Dead book takes things too far into flawed heroes and conflicting agendas. I just felt it was something of a muddle with plots and plans overlapping and stepping on each other without anything clear being gained. Yes, we find that the Sage's Guild isn't without its own politics, and that Wynn has to grow up, but really, couldn't that have been conveyed in a book where *something* happened? For that matter, even Wynn's growth is somewhat unsatisfactory. She spends most of the book off her stride and completely unsure of herself, and even her climactic actions at the end of the book are undercut by a rapid backtrack.

And I haven't mentioned the biggest problem of the book yet, which is the complete absence of Magerie & Leesil. Even the "go our seperate ways for now" scene is missing, only thought on by Wynn in passing and it feels like a big story chunk is missing. I suppose it could have been told in a short story in an anthology somewhere as is becoming popular in the Urban Fantasy arena lately, but I haven't heard of it. I realize that Wynn wasn't part of the original Magerie & Leesil team, but the three worked very well together, and I don't think Wynn alone or with her supporting characters (both new, and an older one whose reappearance is bound to have consequences that were skimmed over here). I suppose the next book will concentrate on Magerie & Leesil and the one after that will re-unite the team, but so far, I'm not liking the split-up very much. (Though I will still follow the series for now).

I have enjoyed the first books in the series. I found them when there were only 3, and they really helped take me away when I was in need of escape to another world. I was impressed.

But I have real problems with this one. The characters I love are not in it. I am not a big fan of Wynn, and she seems brainless and useless here, although I am sure that was not the intent. I think that you have to read it to stay with the series but if you have not read any, DON"T start with this one. If this was the first one I had read, I am not sure I would have read another.

I have become a fan of the Noble Dead series and this is an spin off/offshoot from that series that frankly should have been pointed out.
Wynn alone with Chane a bit and all the rest new characters...ho hum. At times I found myself putting it down because I was bored and I can't say I even remember the ending well - why because it was incredible boring and not one thing was "taken" care of...no one dies but minor characters you could care less about.
I say next series have Wynn drained and left for a husk. Just not a compelling character to keep around let alone base a whole book off of.

I'll wait for the paperback of the next novel just to make sure it is better than this one.

I confess, I was disappointed. I love her other series featuring Leesil and Magiere, but this series featuring their tagalong sidekick Wynn was just tedious. As a murder mystery it was pretty dull, mostly because the authors spend too much time describing the sage's guild and it's inner workings that the story and action is subsumed.

I also found myself failing to care about Chane who is Wynn's romantic interest. He was just way to violent and vile in the previous books for me to consider him redeemable as a boyfriend. The rest of the secondary characters are pretty uninteresting, and I felt the story could've been edited to remove most of the unnecessary detail about the guild in favor of focusing on Wynn and the action.

I found myself losing interest in the characters and plot and simply skimming to find out how the novel ended. I'm not sure I'll read more of Wynn's solo adventures. She doesn't have a lot to offer as a character and is just as bad in her own series as she was hanging on Leesil and Magiere's coattails.

Unappealing characters, incohesive plot. You don't know what happens next but you have a hard time caring because you just aren't invested in the cast or the tale. The next book had better have some hooks, or I'm moving on until they move on to the next stage in this project.

Let me preface my review by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed the first series of Noble Dead books. For the most part, I would rate those titles as a 5, maybe one as a 4. I offer this information only so that it is clear how I responded to this book comparatively.

I didn't hate it, certainly, but nor did I love it as I did its predecessors (yes, I know it technically doesn't have any as it begins a new series, but in my mind, it is a continuation of sorts). There were several reasons for this. First, it lacked the characters I had truly come to appreciate from the first series. In all fairness, though, Wynn was never a favorite of mine. She's not awful. She's also not interesting enough to engage me in the story though - not on her own. Before the book was released, I was concerned because of this... but hopeful that I would be wrong and I'd enjoy this book as much as the others. Unfortunately, I wasn't. Wynn just didn't do it for me. Second, although the plot was interesting, the pacing was a bit off (as other reviewers have mentioned) and the "wrap-up" wasn't as clean as I would have liked. Maybe "reason 1" underlies this as well, as there was no witty repartee to fall back on during story lulls? The chemistry was missing!

I'm not ready to abandon the series. The writing is still good and the concept is interesting. But I really do hope that the original characters return...

I loved the series until now. I felt the book was boring and Wynn is just not interesting enough to carry the entire story. The book was very light on the action and heavy on the details of the guild's library.

The second Noble Dead series begins with a whimper. The books in the first series were enjoyable, if uneven in their pacing. The characters' interplay and unfolding personal histories kept my interest piqued and helped to support a gradually unfolding journey through the overall arc of the series.

In Shade and Shadow leaves most of the characters from the first series behind -- at least for now. The story focuses on Wynn, who was an integral part of the first series, but not a main character. I like her character a lot as a supporting player, but so far she isn't making a very interesting protagonist. This may be due to the fact that she spends much of the book feeling helpless, oppressed and confused, and hence not really doing anything about her situation. Also, the story itself moves along at a glacial pace, with detail upon detail piled upon not much actually happening for many pages. After 200 pages, the stakes finally become more immediate, and the arc of this second series starts to take form. But for me, it is too little, too late.

If you're going to write a series complete with building maps, multiple languages, detailed breakdowns of social organizations, and a lot of exposition to keep readers reminded of revelations from previous books in the series, then you need to support the weight of all that detail with a brisk, engaging story. Instead, In Shade and Shadow just plods along and, for great swaths, is just plain boring.

I'm sad to leave the world of this series behind, but I don't know that I'll want to dive in again when there is so much out there that am more likely to enjoy.

I've read all six books from the first series of the Noble Dead Saga.

Dhampir
Thief of Lives
Sister of the Dead
Traitor to the Blood
Rebel Fay
Child of a Dead God

This novel is the first book of series two.

At the end of Child of a Dead God, the sage, Wynn, finds a library in an aging castle on a mountain atop the world, and the texts inside the library were written by ancient vampires (in a number of dead languages). She carries some of these texts away, and then when she returns to civilization, she is given the tasks of carrying this "treasure" across the sea all the way back to her homeland and the main guild of sages.

In Shade and Shadow begins about a year and a half later. Apparently, the journey back took a while, and Wynn has been living at the guild of sagecraft for about six months. But upon her return home, all the texts were taken from her by her superiors, and the information is being translated in secret. She is not even allowed to see the texts. Worse, everyone at the guild seems to believe she's gone "mental" and they don't believe her stories of vampires and ghosts and Elvish assassins.

Then, one night, two young sages are bringing some of the transcribed pages of the ancient texts back to the guild--from a scribe's shop--and they are murdered. When Wynn sees their bodies, she suspects they died by unnatural means, and when her superiors try to force her into silence, she begins trying to uncover the truth.

This book is somewhat different from the previous Noble Dead novels because it has the feel of a murder mystery. One of my favorite characters here is a new one named Captain Rodian who is investigating the murders for the city guard, and he is expected to "find someone" quickly and solve the case--but of course he is looking for a mortal murderer. He's a very conflicted person, rather young for his job, and quite ambitious.

Wynn's character grows up a good deal in this book, and she is joined by the vampire Chane, who was a secondary character in the first series. He's quite interesting here too.

I read this book quickly, and I'm not a fast reader. I couldn't put it down. It's such an engrossing story, and I could not wait to find out what happened next. This has become one of my favorite Noble Dead novels--and I wasn't sure what to expect. These writers just keep getting better. I'm only sad that I must wait a year for the next book!

This has the same review that I made on Through Stone and Sea. Boring! I couldn't put the first series down and with both the books in the second series, I have to fight myself to read them. These are nothing like the first series. These are based on Wynn and there wasn't enough interesting about Wynn by herself to write a book about let alone two of them! I can't recommend this book either.