Tuesday, August 20, 2019

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Shadowblade by Anna Kashina




The descriptors "Good" or "Bad" are kind of hard to use for any kind of book - not only is what someone considers to be good or bad a matter of taste, but some books acknowledged to be "bad" or, let's say "trashy," can be fun to read and still enjoyable while other books acknowledged to be "good" can be a bore or just painful to read.  Some of my favorite books I've read this year would be considered to be "trashy" for instance, but they're pretty fun at the same time.

I use this preamble because Shadowblade isn't fun, it's just dumbfoundingly stupid and bad for most of its story.  The story is badly badly overwritten - point of view (and sometimes non point of view) characters can't help but give the readers their every thought and opinion in the most long-winded way possible, with no subtlety in motivations and actions at all, and it gets annoying fairly quickly.  Even worse, the story relies upon the characters - one of whom's primary attribute is being smart - having constant moments of stupidity which made me want to beat my head against a wall.  Add to that some really poorly written action scenes (and even the sex scenes) and well, I wouldn't really recommend Shadowblade to anyone.

Note: I read this as an audiobook, and the reader is merely fine, with the accents being a little annoying but not much.  But if I misspell any names in this review, that's why.
-----------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
17 years ago, the Zeg Emperor, known for his cruelty, used a treaty signing as a trap for the Royal Family of the Kingdom of Challimar, and massacred every member of the Chall Royal Family.  However, one Chall royal guardsman, wounded and dying, found her way to the Daljeer Circle, and in her last gasps delivered a package: a baby girl.

Now, 17 years later, that girl, Naia, has grown up as a trainee of the Jaihar Order, an Order of weapon fighters famed throughout the land.  But when her career as a member of the order seems threatened by her attacking a superior, interference from the Daljeer leader, the very man who took her as a baby, sends her on a very different path.  For the next three years she will be unknowingly trained not just to be a top blade of the Jaihar, but to impersonate a lost member of the Chall Royal Family for the sake of toppling the Imperial rule that once led to not only the massacre, but cruelties around the world.  It will take all of the skill of a topnotch Jaihar Blademaster, a Shadowblade, for Naia to survive the cutthroats in the Imperial Palace for the time needed to carry off this plan.

But the plan, devised in tandem by the Daljeer and Jaihar leadership, relies upon a number of outsiders following through to ensure the end of the Zeg Imperial Dynasty....and some of those outsiders might just have their own agenda.....one which could be the end for Naia, and spell doom to the innocent citizens of the Empire....
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The plot summary above is kind of hard to do, because this book, among its many other problems, is paced incredibly weirdly.  It takes till about 60% of the way through the book for the main character to even get the mission that the book's amazon summary and entire setup lets you know is coming, the basics of that mission then take the next 10%, with the pandemonium that follows (which I tried not to spoil too much) being the rest of the book.  Even if the book didn't have its other problems, the fact that it takes so long to get to the damn point might cause readers to put this book down.

Of course the issue here is that the book does have these other problems.  For one, the characters are just really poorly written, to the point where I spent so much time in my car listening to the book yelling at them.  I have no problem with insecure main characters, as Naia is I guess supposed to be at times, but the book can't seemingly decide if Naia is insecure or supremely confident and alternates between the two of them frequently enough that it gets incredibly annoying.  She's not a particularly fun heroine in any way and just as the book gets to the point where all of her build up and training might result in payoff, it takes away all of her agency whatsoever so as to make that pointless.  She winds up doing practically nothing that contributes to the book's resolution, and she's the MAIN CHARACTER, and what she often does is incredibly dumbfoundingly stupid.  Like, the book hints at times that she is going to figure out what is going on and take charge, but it NEVER HAPPENS.

The other characters aren't much better.  The two other protagonists - or at least point of view characters - Dal Gassan and Jai Karrem - are incredibly damn frustrating throughout.  Karrem is the better of the two, as the elite warrior who is supposed to aid Naia and falls in love with her, but his characterization completely doesn't match his reputation - he's hinted at and then explicitly talked about as being basically a braggart and a womanizer, but falls for Naia at first sight and never shows any signs of those negative traits whatsoever.  You can root for him since his situation is at least relateable and not the result mostly of his own idiocy unlike other characters, but he's at best boring.  Gassan is so much worse - he's the head of an Order of scholars and healers and meant to be a brilliant tactician, but he takes so damn long to see the obvious in front of him that it's utterly mindboggling.  For example, and I just have to mildly spoil this one, at one point, the antagonist is in their final act and is RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM AND NAIA with the two of them holding weapons while the antagonist is wounded and unarmed, and the antagonist is using magic through their voice and an artifact across the room for their evil plan.  Does he opt to kill the antagonist?  Nah, he yells at Naia to stop the artifact instead, causing lots more problems for everyone involved, despite all of the antagonist's obvious evil actions and the fact that they have to die.  It's just, AGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Add to this is the fact that everyone and everything is so poorly written and it's just a slog to get through.  Every internal monologue of the characters features absolutely no subtlety whatsoever, with characters going on long diatribes about their conflicting thoughts constantly - the amount of times characters use words like "besides" in their monologues is agonizing.  And for a book where two of our protagonists are supposed to be elite warriors with many kinds of weapons, the book is actually lousy at describing action and fight scenes, relying on vague generalizations rather than descriptions so that you have no idea what is actually taking place.  Hell, even the sex scenes aren't even well done, not that I'm exactly an expert on those.

I could go on and on about this book but seriously, it's not worth my time, or yours.  Skip this one.

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