A Sleight of Shadows

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Hm.

I'm not sure where to start with this one, because while I really loved the general gist of the story, there were some glaring missing pieces of it for me. I love the first book in this duology — An Unkindness of Magicians. I love love love that one. It felt new, original, and fresh when I read it for the first time. When it comes to A Sleight of Shadows, however, it feels like it's missing something. It's almost but not quite a whole story, unfortunately.

So what's it missing? Emotion. There is very little emotional connection in this book. Hardly any of the characters show any other emotion other than rage or fear. Several characters die — I won't say who — and no one...seems to care? We don't see anyone really mourning them, we don't see the loss truly felt on page. It's just something that happens and suddenly everyone is okay with it and moves on. Now, this might be because The Unseen World is built on death and everyone is used to people just dying, but c'mon. That feels ridiculous. A cop-out answer if there ever was one. Now, how on earth do you write a book where the main character has major, extreme, PTSD about something in her past and never include emotion? How does that even happen?

The meat of the story, the action-y bits were just as good as the first book in this series. The magic used isn't as spectacular or mind-blowing, but it's there and it is at the very least interesting. But just like in An Unkindness of Magicians, I'm missing the connection. You want Sydney to succeed in what she's set out to do, you want her to win, but my god couldn't we see her feel something? The only loss we see her mourn over is the loss of her magic. How on earth could that be it? There's a lot of telling going on, and not a lot of showing, unfortunately.

The other characters — especially the villain — are great. The rage and entitlement felt there was nausea inducing. The ending, once again, comes too quick and without much build up. I only knew I was getting close to the book ending by the percentage complete climbing higher towards 100% on my Kindle. Without that, I would have thought I had a lot more book coming. I'm slightly disappointed by this one. It could have been great, it could have been something really unique, but instead we have a half-complete story. Three-and-a-half stars.