A Tale of Stars and Shadow

I love hidden gems. Little personal secrets, books or other things that are just so good you don't want to share them with anyone else save a couple close friends. Curiosities that maybe aren't the most universal, but connect with you in a deep way.

I stumbled across this book on a reddit thread. It was mentioned in a comment with one upvote. I looked it up, read some reviews, and decided that this was either going to be awful or incredibly good.

And I'm so glad I picked this up, because god damn this is the best fantasy book I've read this year.

The genre of this is still unclear, and I think that's wonderful, because it digs at everything someone who loves modern fantasy could ever want. Competence porn. A ragtag group of misfits banding together. Swashbuckling raids and adventures. A huge assortment of magics and people who can fly. A slow burn romance. And an overwhelming sense of immersion that drags you into the story from the first page.

ATOSAS finished fourth in the 2019 Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, behind three novels that have gone on to become very famous. It scored an 8.5/10 in that competition. This book probably reads much better post-pandemic, with the trend towards cozier, more optimistic fantasy, and slightly tropier, guilty-pleasure elements becoming the norm in some popular books. Make no mistake, this is very modern genre fantasy. Don't go into this expecting some literary masterpiece - this is just setup of a very nice world and plotline, and flawless execution.

And I loved it. You probably won't like it as much as me, but I still think you should read it.

Rating: 9.5/10
Comparisons: somewhere in between Eli Monpress (but more serious), Mistborn (but lighter and faster-paced), and Fourth Wing (with good writing and without the sex).