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A review by toggle_fow
As Shadow, a Light by Rachel Neumeier
4.0
After the high-tension cliffhanger ending of book 2, this kicks off without a single pause.
Daniel is in the most horrible situation imaginable, forced to betray Tenai, Mitereh, and everyone else he cares for in this world, or else lose his daughter to an unimaginable fate. On the other hand, Jenna and Emel embark on the riskiest cross-country journey ever trying to reach the king and warn him of his secret enemy. In the background, Mitereh, Tenai and the other political chess pieces continue to maneuver on the board of coming warfare.
The two main story threads following Daniel and then Jenna and Emel stay separate for most of the book. The Daniel one is HORRIBLE. It's agonizing and awful. Even after he thinks he's found a way around the magical strictures placed on him, you never KNOW until so late. I was even looking for signs of a secret Oceans 11 fake-out heist being carried out around him, and nothing seemed to be happening until literally the last second. During a few scenes I was close to screaming with pure frustration!
This is the sole reason I have docked a star, and it's not because it's BAD. Just because it hurt my feelings a lot, and I don't know that I would choose to reread this book again for that reason.
The Jenna and Emel plot was much more enjoyable to follow, though still high-stakes. Their escape and falling in with bandits was very interesting, though I do admit that, as someone who has done 10+ years of various martial arts training, I squint a little bit sideways at how effective Jenna's martial arts training is at allowing her to easily kill people with her bare hands. I have to suspend disbelief because I wasn't personally instructed by a supernatural warrior from another dimension. But still, at times it seems like a bit of a stretch.
Jenna and Emel's relationship is nice, such as it is. Like most of the relationships in this book, it exists almost entirely without words. Instead, it is underpinned by a strongly-woven lattice of history, deeds, ritual, and duty. On paper, I support it. In truth, I don't understand it.
This is because the more time I spend with Emel and the more I heard him talk, the more I like him. Jenna, unfortunately, becomes less real and more vaguely stupid the more dialogue she is given. Her inner world narration is FINE, but for some reason every time she has to speak out loud for longer than one sentence, she sounds like an underbaked fifteen-year-old with a too-steady diet of Instagram and TikTok. It's fortunate that the circumstances of the majority of this book forced her to remain mostly laconic.
The denouement was good, primarily because it provided an end to Daniel's suffering. I also, as usual, really liked Mitereh's creative solutions to problems, and how he dispensed both justice and favor in due course to each person involved.
Tenai, if anything, is even more narratively distant in this book than the last one. We hardly know anything that is going on in her mind, or what lies behind any action she takes. This is even true at the end, when SUPPOSEDLY she had been in on the plot the whole time, but then became poisoned with hatred by the recurrence of war and possibly doing a human sacrifice. This is fine, but I wish we had gotten to see a debrief afterward with Daniel. If anything was lacking, it was again the kind of meaningful conversations between characters that were mostly implied to have taken place, but off-screen.
Daniel is in the most horrible situation imaginable, forced to betray Tenai, Mitereh, and everyone else he cares for in this world, or else lose his daughter to an unimaginable fate. On the other hand, Jenna and Emel embark on the riskiest cross-country journey ever trying to reach the king and warn him of his secret enemy. In the background, Mitereh, Tenai and the other political chess pieces continue to maneuver on the board of coming warfare.
The two main story threads following Daniel and then Jenna and Emel stay separate for most of the book. The Daniel one is HORRIBLE. It's agonizing and awful. Even after he thinks he's found a way around the magical strictures placed on him, you never KNOW until so late. I was even looking for signs of a secret Oceans 11 fake-out heist being carried out around him, and nothing seemed to be happening until literally the last second. During a few scenes I was close to screaming with pure frustration!
This is the sole reason I have docked a star, and it's not because it's BAD. Just because it hurt my feelings a lot, and I don't know that I would choose to reread this book again for that reason.
The Jenna and Emel plot was much more enjoyable to follow, though still high-stakes. Their escape and falling in with bandits was very interesting, though I do admit that, as someone who has done 10+ years of various martial arts training, I squint a little bit sideways at how effective Jenna's martial arts training is at allowing her to easily kill people with her bare hands. I have to suspend disbelief because I wasn't personally instructed by a supernatural warrior from another dimension. But still, at times it seems like a bit of a stretch.
Jenna and Emel's relationship is nice, such as it is. Like most of the relationships in this book, it exists almost entirely without words. Instead, it is underpinned by a strongly-woven lattice of history, deeds, ritual, and duty. On paper, I support it. In truth, I don't understand it.
This is because the more time I spend with Emel and the more I heard him talk, the more I like him. Jenna, unfortunately, becomes less real and more vaguely stupid the more dialogue she is given. Her inner world narration is FINE, but for some reason every time she has to speak out loud for longer than one sentence, she sounds like an underbaked fifteen-year-old with a too-steady diet of Instagram and TikTok. It's fortunate that the circumstances of the majority of this book forced her to remain mostly laconic.
The denouement was good, primarily because it provided an end to Daniel's suffering. I also, as usual, really liked Mitereh's creative solutions to problems, and how he dispensed both justice and favor in due course to each person involved.
Tenai, if anything, is even more narratively distant in this book than the last one. We hardly know anything that is going on in her mind, or what lies behind any action she takes. This is even true at the end, when SUPPOSEDLY she had been in on the plot the whole time, but then became poisoned with hatred by the recurrence of war and possibly doing a human sacrifice. This is fine, but I wish we had gotten to see a debrief afterward with Daniel. If anything was lacking, it was again the kind of meaningful conversations between characters that were mostly implied to have taken place, but off-screen.