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A review by wingstitch
The Silent Shield by Jeff Wheeler
5.0
I have enjoyed this series from the beginning. Strong characters, interesting landscape, enough action but not too much (nothing sours me on a book faster than guys fighting just because 50 more pages have passed, and it's time for a fight). The women warriors are believable to me, and welcome.
There is one problem that almost led me to downgrade it to four stars, and it is almost inevitable in a series that runs beyond a trilogy: the need to recap previous story threads, remind us how the characters fit together, and otherwise help readers to catch up with the books that came before, can bog down the first hundred pages significantly. (Let's call that the Ice/Fire Dilemma - leave readers on their own, and trust that they have read and remembered what came before, or fill them in completely and risk losing their interest?) After some thought, I decided the re-exposition wasn't excessive, considering the scope of the story. I like the device of using the character list to do some of the summarizing of previous story threads.
All in all, this is an entertaining addition to the Kingfountain series.
There is one problem that almost led me to downgrade it to four stars, and it is almost inevitable in a series that runs beyond a trilogy: the need to recap previous story threads, remind us how the characters fit together, and otherwise help readers to catch up with the books that came before, can bog down the first hundred pages significantly. (Let's call that the Ice/Fire Dilemma - leave readers on their own, and trust that they have read and remembered what came before, or fill them in completely and risk losing their interest?) After some thought, I decided the re-exposition wasn't excessive, considering the scope of the story. I like the device of using the character list to do some of the summarizing of previous story threads.
All in all, this is an entertaining addition to the Kingfountain series.