The Shadow of What Was Lost

The Shadow of What Was Lost takes a little bit to get going, and for me at least, it took awhile for me to actually care about the characters. But once things start moving, you get thrown onto a wild fucking ride. I'm a sucker for plots full of mysteries like this one. I love having a bunch of questions and just KNOWING the answers are going to blow my mind. This book doesn't answer everything right away, but one of the biggest answers is given to you within the last 50 pages, and man is it a doozy.

The whole world is a typical fantasy – no real ‘technology' other than the stuff that's run on magic. To me, it felt like a normal ‘medieval' sort of world, similar to something you'd find in WOT or LOTR but done through the lens of the modern eye. The way the ruling class is set up a little differently than normal, but that just makes things interesting. There are the ‘Gifted' - the people who have magic, then the ‘Administrators' who are NON-magical people who control the Gifted, and then there's Augurs who are magic-users of a different kind. They can see the future, and have other powers and are...kind of over powered just a little. (BUT THERE'S A REASON FOR THAT.) Then there's, of course, regular people, but who cares about those, amirite?

The writing isn't the best, a little clunky when it comes to prose. It feels like the author is just getting onto his feet. I can promise you it gets better in the second book, and once you get there, you settle into the whole story in a magnificent way.