Shadows of Atlantis does us the rare favor of being exactly what it says it is on the box. Exactly what is described in the synopsis is what happens.

I'll admit I was a bit surprised by this. I was so sure once the 'star-crossed lovers' met that the political intrigue plot would play second fiddle to the romance, but that never happened. In fact, I'm not sure the so-called lovers spend enough 'screen time' together for their relationship to even count as one of the main plot points -- which was great. Star-crossed romance is by far the least interesting type of love story because insta-love just isn't that compelling (As per Contrapoints's video on Twilight: people read romance for the yearning, not for the happily ever after).

Luckily in this case, the fact that this is 'insta-love' is part of the intrigue because neither Brigitte nor D'Vinid know why they're so drawn to each other, and D'Vinid is actually really frustrated that it feels out of his control, thus tying the romance aspect back to the behind-the-scenes machinations being set up by the mysterious 'Watchers.'

As is typical of the first book in a high fantasy series, there's a lot of time dedicated to setting up the world and the mechanics of its magic system, and all of that necessary exposition does sometimes weigh down the pacing, but author Mara Powers also does her best to 'show' rather than 'tell' the exposition, which helped tremendously, even if it meant it took a bit longer to catch on to certain mechanics, like 'The Grid' or 'Dreamtime'. And it also meant that by the end of the book it was still a bit unclear what the relationships between various different sects and secret societies and individual characters were. But again, that's just par for the course for the first installment in a series like this, so I can't really ding it for that.

The world of Atlantis as built up by Powers is well-grounded and intriguing, and I really appreciated that setting this story in Atlantis felt purposeful rather than just incidental or lazy. Atlantis is supposed to be a cautionary tale about greed and decadence, and that idea is very much at the heart of 'Shadows of Atlantis.' That being said, the different specific aspects of the culture that she builds up (such as the Kamishari ritual, and various other rituals and customs relating to ‘The Grid’ or ‘The Watchers’) don’t feel derivative, but fresh and vibrant, so that her ‘Atlantis’ didn’t just feel like ‘Ancient Greece but with magic’ as can sometimes be the case in such stories.

She also nicely expanded on the idea of Atlantis as this ancient, yet high-tech civilization. Integrating the necessary sci-fi elements of futuristic technology could have felt anachronistic if not done well, but she went the route of Disney's 'Atlantis' and tied the technology to the magic so that it was easy to imagine them co-existing rather than trying to plop computers or refrigerators in the middle of Ancient Greece or some such. Rather, the magic allows otherwise organic objects to be used in similar ways to modern technology (like stone 'hover disks' powered by magical crystals in lieu of motorized vehicles for instance).

While well-integrated, things like hover-disks or magical healing elixirs aren't anything new. What did feel unique to this world and its technology are these uncanny bio-engineered automatons that act as bodyguards and soldiers. They more or less look like people, but are (for all intents and purposes) lab-grown and therefore have no 'soul.' One of the plot threads I was the most intrigued by was the convergence of the existence of these beings with the mysterious illness 'the madness' that reduces once normal people to mindless zombies. There's a conversation between two characters at one point about a rumour that victims of 'The madness' are being kidnapped and passed off as these automaton creatures because it's a cheap way to increase the supply.

Very creepy.

I wanted to know more.

I'm not normally a high-fantasy girly, but I was honestly invested enough by the end of book 1 to potentially go on the sequel: I need to know what's going to come of all of the puppeteering going on within the government, I need to know how the automoton plotline pans out.

Sure, Brigitte is kind of a boring paint-by-numbers character, but she's really the only one like that, and frankly, this isn't a character-driven story for the most part, so that's not a big deal. I'd rather she feel generic than be annoying.

Also, everyone is hot in Atlantis. Not really a pro or a con (unless you want it to be), but worth noting.