Matt
One of my most pleasant surprises of 2024 was The Shadow of What Was Lost, the first book in James Islington’s Licanius trilogy. Going into that book, I was expecting a solid but not spectacular Wheel of Time knockoff and came away very impressed by Islington’s natural talent as a fantasy writer. That book did everything right in terms of being the opener to a door-stopper fantasy series, so I was very excited to see what Islington had in store for the rest of the series. With that said, second installments are notoriously challenging and so I tempered my expectations.
As it turns out I didn’t need to do that! An Echo of Things to Come is in many ways better than The Shadow of What Was Lost. My biggest gripe with Shadow was its characters. I liked the characters there but I didn’t find myself growing that attached to them. I felt that the characters were mere conduits for some really strong storytelling and great worldbuilding. Here, that changes. The characters in Echo feel a lot more fleshed out and interesting than they ever were in Shadow, allowing for a lot more emotional resonance as I started caring a lot more about them.
What’s even better is that this increase in character quality does not come at the expense of what made Shadow as good as it was. Islington’s pacing is once again quite strong and in Echo that’s even more necessary as the scope expands a lot more. A lot of Echo follows four POVs in at least three different locations, making it a really tough juggling act. This is an act that many writers would fail but Islington doesn’t and the result is as good of a second volume to a fantasy trilogy that you’re going to get. My expectations are officially through the roof for the final book in the trilogy.
One of my most pleasant surprises of 2024 was The Shadow of What Was Lost, the first book in James Islington’s Licanius trilogy. Going into that book, I was expecting a solid but not spectacular Wheel of Time knockoff and came away very impressed by Islington’s natural talent as a fantasy writer. That book did everything right in terms of being the opener to a door-stopper fantasy series, so I was very excited to see what Islington had in store for the rest of the series. With that said, second installments are notoriously challenging and so I tempered my expectations.
As it turns out I didn’t need to do that! An Echo of Things to Come is in many ways better than The Shadow of What Was Lost. My biggest gripe with Shadow was its characters. I liked the characters there but I didn’t find myself growing that attached to them. I felt that the characters were mere conduits for some really strong storytelling and great worldbuilding. Here, that changes. The characters in Echo feel a lot more fleshed out and interesting than they ever were in Shadow, allowing for a lot more emotional resonance as I started caring a lot more about them.
What’s even better is that this increase in character quality does not come at the expense of what made Shadow as good as it was. Islington’s pacing is once again quite strong and in Echo that’s even more necessary as the scope expands a lot more. A lot of Echo follows four POVs in at least three different locations, making it a really tough juggling act. This is an act that many writers would fail but Islington doesn’t and the result is as good of a second volume to a fantasy trilogy that you’re going to get. My expectations are officially through the roof for the final book in the trilogy.