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

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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saltycoffee's review against another edition

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This book is a meal without taste. Incredible plot convenience mixed with characters so paper thin they're made of tissue paper made this story overwhelmingly flavorless.

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donatio's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

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

3.75

I did love the heavy world-building, that there was not as much romance as in many other books and I agree with all the people who say that the females were better-crafted than the male ones.
Yet this book felt quite slow to me and as if nothing much happens. The time skips seemed to skip over important parts and it all seems quite "easy" as in the prota could always find a solution right away and there were many points when they could just TELL that someone was trustworthy, too often in my opinion. Furthermore I have not been able to really bond with the characters, their grief for example did not affect me.
You can tell that it is a debut and not up there with Samantha Shannon or V. E. Schwab but I am intrigued enough to read the next books.

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