Tuesday, July 23, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Shadow Chase by Seressia Glass




Shadow Chase is the second book in Seressia Glass' "Shadowchasers" trilogy, following up on her book, "Shadow Blade" (review here).  Shadow Blade was fun if unremarkable - an urban fantasy series taking place in Atlanta featuring Non-White protagonists, a world built in part upon Egyptian Mythology (with one prominent non Egyptian but still African God as well), and a classic battle between light and darkness.  Still, I'm a pretty big fan of urban fantasy, and while unremarkable Shadow Blade was well done, with a mythology I haven't read often, so I asked my library to consider buying the sequels.  And a few weeks ago, the NYPL did buy both sequels, so I took them out for a try.

And again, Shadow Chase is a pretty well done second book in the series.  The book expands the series' scope, leaving Atlanta for other parts of the world, further builds upon the developments and relationships between our characters, while continuing to tell a story of urban fantasy featuring beings out of Egyptian Myth.  The book ends with a payoff that's maybe a bit of an anticlimax, but it still all works to form a very solid urban fantasy novel.  So yeah, if you like the genre, this isn't a bad choice of series to pick up.

----------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Shadow Chaser Kira Solomon is still reeling from the results of her confrontation with the Fallen in Atlanta, and coming to grips with all that's changed: her mentor - and apparent handler - is dead, her friends now include a demigod and a 4000 year old Nubian, Khefar, who she can actually touch without harming, and she actually died only to appear before her patron goddess, Ma'at, and been resurrected by her as the Hand of Ma'at, the goddess of truth.  To only add to her confusion and despair, Kira still feels the touch of Shadow within her, the same Shadow that once infected her and caused her not only to kill others, but to harm and threaten her friends.

Yet when Kira and Khefar go to London to help finish going through her mentor's remains, Kira finds herself given a vision of potential doom, of a flood that could wipe out the world through the misuse of an ancient artifact.  To make it worse, that artifact appears to have been stolen by another Shadow Chaser, and Kira is forced to go after him.  But in order to set things right and save the world, Kira will have to deal with learning more truths about the balance of Light and Shadow than she ever knew, and truths about their presence within herself that she may not actually want to deal with......and may change everything she thinks she knows.
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Shadow Chase follows the same structure as its predecessor, which shouldn't be a surprise considering it picks up right after Shadow Blade ended.  The story is split from being told from Kira and Khefar's points of view, although Kira is clearly the more prominent of the two and gets more of the story told from her perspective.

Which makes sense, because Kira is the focal point of the story, which is as much about dealing with the mysteries behind Kira's place in the world, her power, and her origins, as it is about Kir and Khefar trying to save the world.  That Kira was no mere typical Shadow Chaser - as exceptional as those tend to be - is hardly a surprise and was teased heavily in the first book, but here that begins to come out more fully as a more prominent plot point.  And Kira's reactions to this are very believable and make her really easy to root for, even when she's sometimes being a bit more obtuse regarding the revelations than the reader might imagine.  She's brave and headstrong and still cares about protecting others, but deeply afraid of the Shadow within her, and the balance she tries to strike as things threaten constantly to mess with that balance, carries the story in an effective way.

Which is not to say that there aren't other interesting characters in this book.  The story continues Kira's relationship with Khefar, the 4000 year old immortal Nubian, and I thought the romance between them worked a lot better this time around.  He's an excellent sidekick (not really an equal partner, despite how the book tries to portray it) to Kira, and is a solid narrator.  Khefar's friend, the demigod Nansee (Kweku Anansi) continues to be great, as a wisecracking helpful companion who sometimes can steal the show with his dialogue.  And Kira's friends Wynne and Zoo may not have much to their individual characters other than to provide additional support, but they also kind of work.  And then there's the further developments of the myth characters - Balm, Kira's adoptive mother and head honcho of the Light's organization, several Egyptian Gods, and other characters who are revealed - these all contribute to the expanding of this world's setting and work well in both furthering the plot and introducing new mysteries to consider going forward.

The book does kind of share its predecessor's problem in that the finale is kind of an anticlimax - after all that happens prior to it, you expect there to be a greater challenge than there is in the final act of saving the world - and well, there isn't.  And as you might've gathered from the character breakdown I gave above, quite a few of the characters in this book don't have full individual substance on their own, and instead exist mainly to revolve around Kira - particularly Wynne and Zoo - which gives them less impact than they might have otherwise.

Still, it's a second enjoyable installment in an urban fantasy series featuring a mythic background I'm not as used to, which I can't complain about.  Again, this isn't my favorite urban fantasy series, but it's still a good amount of fun and worth your time if you really like the genre.

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