Reviews with content warning for Rape - The Shadow of What Was Lost

Reviews tagging 'Rape'

The Shadow of What Was Lost by James Islington

8 reviews

chrisb913's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

This book gripped me in it's clutches from start to finish. Islington's use of mystery, action, and character work had me confused and second guessing who to even trust.

This is an very thick book and there is a lot of information on the world, magic system, and the characters but I felt Islington did a great job giving us just enough to keep us interested without info dumping constantly.

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wearethistogether's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

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nerdkitten's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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aang_arang's review against another edition

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adventurous dark informative mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

There was so much I loved about this book. I went out on a limb here and read this book for my personal book club with my best friend, and neither of us are high fantasy readers but we wanted to try something different and I love beefy books. Immediately upon reading I knew I loved the writing style and execution of this book. It's very friendly to new fantasy readers and while it takes getting used to names and places, it was very engaging the entire time, and nothing ever felt like a slog to get through. Asha's storyline was my favorite. I loved seeing her journey through the different worlds and I feel like her point of views is where we gained some of the most world building.

I also really dislike when books leave you questioning for too long but this book answers just enough tiny questions to keep you chugging on. I also thing it worked in favor of the narrative style. You find out information in real time with the characters, you're never given larger overarching info that you're left sitting on waiting for the characters to find out. It really made you feel like you were apart of the journey as well.

Now that I've said that, I also thing this book lacked in many ways. This book is 680 pages of exposition. And for a book that long I really don't think that there should be unanswered questions or open plot lines to this extent. We should get a full circle story arc and line for a boom despite if it's a trilogy or not. I'm not sure I could really name what the plot was if asked. I knew we were traveling and building to something but you dont really know what that is until the very last chapters of the book. It didn't feel like the journey had stakes because I was unsure of what we were trying to build to.

There was a good world building but I can't help but feel like there are aspects to the Tols and rest of the world that are still questionable.

I'm going to sit on the book for a week and see if I feel like finishing the series.

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cdonegan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

I really wanted to like this book. The lore was interesting but the execution lost me. The writing of the female characters wasn’t great—not “she breasted boobily down the stairs” level of badness, but I can only think of two times in this entire book that two women spoke to each other in a significant way. I swear every single woman was described as “attractive” when introduced, usually with that exact word. It made me want to scream every time!

I barely understood the motivation of most of the characters because it just wasn’t shown to us. They seemed to just react to things happening around them for most of the book, rather than taking real action themselves. Minor characters also didn’t stand out to me, making it hard to remember who people were. The book also kept a lot of things hidden from the reader, not in a way that would be satisfying to figure out later on in the book, but rather in a way that just left me lost and confused many times.

Overall, I guess enjoyed it enough to read 700 pages of it, but not enough to continue on with the trilogy. It had the potential to be great but it was a miss for me.

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