Tuesday, February 5, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass




Shadow Blade is the first in an urban fantasy trilogy from author Seressia Glass.  In a classic fantasy trope, the story involves an ancient battle between the Light and Shadow - in which our heroine is a warrior on the side of Light - a Shadow Chaser - who fears possibly succumbing to the influence of darkness.  In a less common version of the trope, the heroine and secondary protagonist both draw power from faith in Egyptian Gods, despite the story taking place in modern day Atlanta.

The result is a story that had elements reminiscent of quite a few other older works, but which combined those elements into an interesting and different way.  The story could probably have used another 50 pages - the central romance and the ending are a little rushed - but it's a fun marriage of elements into a very solid urban fantasy story.  Unfortunately, my library doesn't have the rest of the trilogy, so I might not get to the sequels any time soon, but I do plan on checking them out eventually.


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------
When Kira Solomon was 12, her power - her "extrasense" - blossomed, allowing her to see the past and truth behind anything she touched.  Unfortunately, it also drained anyone she touched, putting her adopted sister into a coma, and her adopted parents gave her up to the only person they could find: a woman known as the Balm of Gilead, the leader of an organization dedicated to the Light and Order and to fighting the forces of Shadow and Chaos, and to preserve the Balance.

Years later, Kira maintains a double life, working in archaeology in Atlanta, specializing in Ancient Egyptian Artifacts on the surface, but really working for Gilead as a "Shadowchaser" - one of its special agents dedicated to fighting the servants of Shadow.  But when a 4000 year old Egyptian Dagger with enormous magical power falls into her hands, the Shadow forces after it kill Kira's mentor, and she swears to get vengeance.

But this is no mere adept of Shadow, this is a full fledged Shadow Avatar searching for the dagger, a force of power greater than any she's seen before.  Can Kira manage to find and stop the Avatar without falling into the depths of Shadow herself?  The only chance she has may be to team up with the Dagger's original owner, a 4000 year old Nubian warrior with his own agenda.  And as Kira begins to work with him, she begins to find herself hoping for things she had once thought beyond her reach....a hope that hopefully won't lead her astray as everything comes to a head....
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Shadow Blade spends a lot of time setting up its world and the characters, as it follows Kira - and sometimes the secondary protagonist Khefar - through the story.  But it all works out rather well, with a really interesting urban fantasy world, where a battle between forces of Light and Shadow has raged throughout Millenia, and Gods of many different pantheons are real and have at least some influence.  Both of our heroes are patrons of ancient Egyptian gods (Ma'at and Isis), but other pantheons are at least hinted to exist as well, with the African Spider God Ananse for example making an appearance.  Urban Fantasy is a genre I generally like quite a bit, and the merging of magic, mythology, and technology in this world worked really well for me.

It helps that our characters are rather good.  Kira is going to bring to mind Rogue from the X-Men pretty much immediately - she's cursed with the inability to touch anyone for fear of draining their life - but she's definitely more than that.  She's a fun action heroine, a fighter who is rather creative in her methods and yet surprisingly sentimental and introspective.  And while the reader will see coming that there's more to her origin than she knows (which is only hinted at in this book and left for the sequels to really deal with), her lack of knowledge is handled in a way which isn't irritating.  It's really easy to root for and feel for her.

The other characters work quite well too - Khefar gets the most screen time aside from Kira, as the only other character to get a POV.  He's not quite as developed as Kira (see below), but he's still a fun different type of fighter than Kira and easy to grow to enjoy.  And his "sidekick," an old man with a mysterious power, is a blast and really amusing.

The plot is generally well done, with things moving along at a nice pace (other than what I complain about below) and the action scenes are rather well written.  Again, all of the scenes definitely feel like set pieces I've seen in other books, but they all are executed well and come together well to form a new and interesting mix here.

My biggest complaint about Shadow Blade is that the book feels like it's about 50 pages too short in several ways.  For one, while the central romance between Kira and Khefar makes sense on Kira's side, Khefar's attraction to her didn't seem developed enough to make things move this quickly, and a little more of their time interacting with each other probably could've helped there.  For another, the ending is incredibly rushed, with the final confrontation taking place in basically ten pages near the absolute end of this book, after a ton of build-up.

On the other hand, the fact that my complaint was mainly that I wanted more development and more overall is probably a pretty good sign, so I would recommend Shadow Blade as a pretty solid urban fantasy novel.  Hopefully I can get the other two books in the trilogy soon enough to see if it takes a leap into a really great series now that the buildup has been completed.
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