Customer Reviews

Shape-Changer's Wife

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The two things I love best about Sharon Shinn's books are her character development and her unique plots. And this book is no exception.
A young magician-in-training, Aubrey, journeys to a remote manor to apprentice himself to the greatest shape changer ever, on the recommendation of his last teacher. Aubrey finds his new home strange and things about the other inhabitants downright alarming. His new teacher seems to taunt him with knowledge instead of imparting it and is often gone on mysterious missions that he refuses to speak of. The servants seem to hate their master, but refuse to leave him. Those who live in the nearby village are terrified of, not only the shape changer, but his entire household as well. And as for Lilith, the shape changers wife, she seems to feel nothing at all.
Aubrey finds himself strangely bound to each one, but especially Lilith. As Aubrey begins to learn more than his teacher ever meant for him to, he also begins unraveling a startling mystery that will change the destinies of himself and all that surround him.
The plot was intriguing, romantic, and often surprising. Fantasy fans won't want to miss it.

Aubrey, a young magician, has learned just about all he can from his current mentor and decides to become the apprentice of Glyrendon a feared but extremely talented shape changer. Little does he realize he is about to enter into a very strange world.

Upon arriving at Glyrenden's home he is puzzled when he discovers the wizard is out of town for an unspecified amount of time and is further surprised when he encounters the weird, unpersonable inhabitants of the home. Aubrey, a good natured fellow, decides to make the best of his situation and spends his time getting to know Glyrenden's odd wife Lilith.

Lilith becomes a mystery, almost an obsession to Aubrey. Determined to break through to her and find the cause of her sorrow he uses his shape changing knowledge and risks everything he is to help her.

Although I figured out Lilith's secret long before Aubrey did this did not lesson my enjoyment of the tale.

The Shapechanger's Wife is a delightful, fairytale-like, page turner filled with magic and the wonders of nature. It also has an enchanting ending open to the readers own interpretation.

The young magician Aubrey has learned almost all he can from his mentor Cyril, so he is sent to apprentice with the powerful shape-changer Glynrenden. He is warned to be wary of the wizard, and soon notices that the situation is far from normal at Glynrenden's home in the woods. Most strange of all is the mage's disturbing and bewitching wife, Lilith, who watches everything impassively with her luminous green eyes.

Aubrey learns lessons of love and hate, right and wrong, on top of the art of shape-changing during his time as Glynrenden's apprentice. A deftly woven tale, reminiscent of the fairy tales I loved as a child, full of nature and morals. Of course, the reader figures out the truth about Lilith long before Aubrey, but this did nothing to detract from my enjoyment of the story.

I am in love with Sharon Shinn's writing, but this book is not for you if you like a story with more action and whiz-bang.

This book by new author Sharon Shinn, is among the best of recent works of fantasy. She adroitly blends the elements of the classic fairy tale with an in-depth look at the nature of magic in her world and a moving, personal romance into a seamless whole far greater than the sum of its parts. The book centers on a young, talented wizard setting out to learn the most difficult and closely guarded magic - that of shape-changing. However, before he can become anything else, he must learn what it truly means to be a deer, a horse, a tree...or, most importantly, a human.

This is truthfully how fantasy writing was meant to be. "The Shape-Changer's Wife" is a beatiful, short tale with all the elements of the genre and wonderfully written. Most fantasy books try too hard to have complicated plots, and yet don't focus on the characters and the story itself. In this book, the tale is simple, but enriched and perfectly written.

I would definetly recommend this to all Fantasy readers. Sharon Shinn is a master at storytelling.

So many fantasy books use the same characters, conflicts, and themes to build their world around, but The Shape-Changer's Wife is different. It's a unique story with memorable characters and a wonderful mythic quality about it. Parts of the plot are predictable, but the central dilemma is not, and the language and characters are just so wonderful that you have to read to the end. Fans of epics and adventures might find it a bit slow, but it is simply a lovely little story.

This little book carries you right along through a simple and highly original fairy tale constructed with hauntingly familiar story elements. Wizards, magic, romance, good, evil -- it's all there. Rather than using a cloying "fairy tale" tone, Shinn's writing style is contemporary and unpretentious. I highly recommend this novella.

Although I love good fantasy, I personally am very tired of the genre. It's fixated on long stories and complicated worlds that typically span trilogies or more. The enemy is always evil and extremely powerful.

Sharon Shinn has restored my faith that fantasy can do more than regurgitate the same old story over and over.

"The Shape-Changer's Wife" is simple, personal and to the point. The protagonist, Aubrey is really struggling with himself, not the antagonist. Aubrey's real victory and true character is revealed after the antagonist is gone.

Sharon Shinn's prose at times is wonderful and seductive.

There are times when Aubrey is a little on the slow side, but it's not too anoying. And there were times when he seemed to forget thahe was in a world where magic existed and he himself could do miraculous things. But these things are easy to over look in a story as great as this one.

Having mastered most of the other branches of magic, young mage Aubrey has been sent to study shape-changing under the kingdom's expert, wizard Glyrenden. However when he arrives at Glyrenden's home in the forest, the wizard has gone on a journey leaving Aubrey alone with his strange servants and his even stranger wife, Lilith. Little does Aubrey know that the house hides a terrible secret that will change his life forever...

The best thing about this haunting little book is its brevity. Not because it's poorly written, but because it's a complete story arc clocking in at exactly two-hundred pages. Most contemporary adult fantasy is written on an epic scale with multiple tomes of five-hundred pages or more. It was refreshing to be able to read the entire book in one day.

The world building is a bit sketchy, but that's the tradeoff for keeping the story simple by sticking to one main plot and a few characters.

These characters are well enough drawn to be interesting through not terribly complex. Aubrey is almost always cheerful and kindhearted, Lilith dispassionate, and Glyrenden temperamental.

Unfortunately, Lilith's "secret" will be obvious to two-thirds of readers before the first hundred pages are over. Shinn drops hints in globs all over the place, and Aubrey comes across as a bit dense for not getting it sooner.

But that doesn't spoil things too much. The Shape-Changers Wife is a still a pleasant quick read with easy to grasp prose.
Recommended for any fantasy fan looking for a quick fairytale-like read to while a quiet afternoon.

I didn't know it, but this is the kind of book that spoiled "Harry Potter" for me. (Which I recognize to many will sound like damning with faint praise and to others like blasphemy.) I read the first "Harry Potter" book this time last year and didn't like it much. It didn't seem to me to be about magic, but about a school and its students. It seemed rather pedestrian to me. I already love fantasy and science fiction, so "Harry Potter" hardly seemed like a revelation. This is book by Shinn about a magician's training and coming of age and how that tranforms him is so much better, more mature and yet simpler than "Harry Potter." I don't recommend this book to the fourth-grade lovers of HP, but the adults and 15 year olds will love it.

Yes, *this* is what good fantasy can be.