The Shadow of What Was Lost

Anyone else find Islington over explained everything? I felt like there was little mystery left to explore because my hand was held the whole way. I really did like the book but would have enjoyed it more had everything not been stated so matter of factly.

I also felt that there was so much dialogue, ha! Normally not a bad thing but it felt like action scenes were placed just to break up conversations.

Again, still enjoyed it, just being nit picky.

Gave up at 43%.

What a wild ride. There's still a ton of unanswered questions, but I can reasonably assume they will be answered in due time. The plot is fantastic, and really drives the narrative forward. The pacing was fairly good, with only a couple of stumbling points. A very rough breakdown:

• Pacing: 4/5
• Plot: 5/5
• Characters 3/5
• World Building: 4.5/5

My major critisism is in throwing too many names at the reader too quickly. There felt like a hundred named characters in this book, and most of them suffer from "Fantastical-name-itis" where there's very little rhyme or reason to the naming convention, and no hints are given. There were also some relatively pointless characters, or so it seems currently.

Overall it was incredibly nice to have a plot driven story with decent characters. On initial read through, this book will benefit from rereads. I look forward to the next book.

It was okay, I guess?

I really wanted to like the first Licanius book, but as I got further into it, it seemed to become the same thing over and over and over again until Davian met with his Augur mentor in Deillanis. The fight scenes also didn't do anything for me, and I'm not sure why. They were just fine.

What I really ended up enjoying were the visions, or flashbacks, or flash forwards? Those small glimpses provided a ton of information and glimpses into what was to come, and how certain characters became who they were.

Overall, I give The Shadow of What Was Lost a 3/5. It was good, not great, and certainly not bad. Give it a whirl if you enjoy a ton of dialogue, a little lack luster in the action department, but the world building is 10/10.

Honestly, it was a slow start, and the magic is a bit hit-and-miss, but I stuck with it and enjoyed it by the end.

It has been a while since I’ve read ‘door-stopper’ fantasy, a term I just learned and have fallen in love with. For those who don’t know, door-stopper fantasy books are absolutely massive and are frequently part of series. The Wheel of Time series is probably the best example of door-stopper fantasy but in recent years Brandon Sanderson has become the king of this subgenre. I’ve always said that fantasy is my favorite genre and within the genre door-stopper may be my favorite type so going back to it was a real treat. Even as a fan of the genre I have to say that The Shadow of What Was Lost gave me more than I expected and I’m totally shocked by how much I liked it.

The main reason I’m shocked by the sheer joy that I got while reading The Shadow of What Was Lost is because it’s pretty unashamedly derivative. I mentioned The Wheel of Time and Brandon Sanderson earlier and Islington clearly takes influence from both of them in his own writing. There were about 50 times during this book when I thought ‘this is really similar to a Wheel of Time scene’. So much of this book feels like it’s trying to copy beloved works within its genre. This is generally not a good thing, especially from beginner writers.

And yet… Islington still got me. A lot of the reviews I saw for this book praised Islington’s storytelling and I have to agree with them. At its core, The Shadow of What Was Lost is a very interesting story that’s told in a compelling way. The chapters are well-paced. The book as a whole has a really nice flow to it with periods of high action and periods of exposition that never last too long. The POV jumps make total sense as we stay with certain POVs for extended periods of time when they’re at their most interesting but leave them when it is time to do so. The reader is always told just enough so as to be curious but not confused. Islington just has a knack for putting scenes where they need to go and to have them last as long as needed. That’s a genuine talent that is extremely important within this subgenre in particular. When you have hundreds of scenes spread across nearly 700 pages, the ability to construct and place each individual scene becomes vital for the success of a book and Islington nailed it.

This natural storytelling ability allows The Shadow of What Was Lost to succeed despite its relatively uninteresting characters. It’s not like the characters are bad, but the book is at its most derivative when it comes to them. The purposes they serve within the plot are well-handled and I felt compelled by them, but I do think that Islington’s inexperience is most prominent when it comes to them.

All in all The Shadow of What Was Lost gave me exactly what I wanted and more. I eagerly look forward to continuing with the Licanius Trilogy in the future.

An intriguing start to the trilogy. What initially appears to be a standard Tolkienesque Hero's Journey gradually develops into something more interesting. I'm looking forward to reading the next book in the sequence.

3.50/5.00

The Shadow of What Was Lost, or the shadow of the Wheel of Time is a good book, slightly better than okay. This book feels like an homage to the Wheel of Time, shamelessly retelling several themes, ideas, and concepts from the epic series. However, this series introduces an interesting twist with an enjoyable magic system. The story begins with many tropes, but lays over interesting new ideas on top of the existing tropes. We have the chosen one trope, the aes sedai trope, the mysterious and lost civilization trope, and yet it all feels somehow fresh. The story is very quickly wading into deep thematic issues and challenges the readers to take sides, which I find very enjoyable. The pacing is relentless, as the author punches through the plot, with things that I thought would happen later in the series happening right away.

However, this pacing is both a good and a bad thing. While things happen fast, we don't get to sit with the characters. We don't get to understand or think about this world, as interesting as it is, the grand sweeping events that take place in this book fall flat and lack the feeling that should go along with the book. For an WoT/stromlight style epic fantasy, the John Gwynne action style pacing is not working. The characters are good but that is not the focus of this book. Many times everyone is just playing the role they need to play to move the story along. I do think that this series will get better though.

Tremendo inicio de saga.
Personajes principales y secundarios muy bien escritos.
Construcción de mundo muy interesante.
Una historia y narrativa que a momentos es confusa, pero eso lo hace muy muy muy obsesionante. Ahora esto mismo es su punto negativo, ya que abre muchos frentes de narrativas posibles y muchas preguntas que quedan sin responder.
Tremendo final, uno lo intuye, pero no por eso es malo, muy bueno en general el libro.

2024 Update:
I still stand by my original opinion that the book features too much. There is no possible way to fully enjoy it from the first read and any book that needs multiple reading to understand and enjoy can't be rated 5 ⭐️
Other than that, I did love the story and this time I was able to get way more and even have some wild theories.

2022 Original Review:
3.5 stars
I am so conflicted on this one.
To begin with, the story is quite interesting and rather complex, which I like. The world has debt and a lot going on. There were also some nice twists.
But there is simply too much going on. Too many storylines, too many mysteries, too many reveals.
That's not to say that I haven't read stories with just as many of the above and more, but they were never contained in just one book.
The amount of stuff the author has tried to stuff here, is way too much for even a trilogy, in my opinion.
I think it would've been better had he made the book slightly shorter and the series slightly longer, in order to pace the reveals a bit better. Maybe spend some more time on character development and interactions, flesh out some of the mysteries better, give us time and space to digest some of them before moving on to the next one.
Reading this book often felt like overeating - past a certain point, you stop enjoying the food, despite how good it is and need time to digest it before you are hungry again.
Despite all that, I will continue with the series as I am curios about the reveal of the set mysteries (the ones that I can remember).

The beginning didn't grab me. It was too based in fantasy tropes and not in interesting characters. But I loved other books by this author so I'll try again later.

Wow, I was so excited to read this book! I found out about from someone's review under the Fellowship of the Ring and decided it must be worth the read, and I was not disappointed! The setting, the characters, the plot, I loved it all! Can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy.

Age range: 16+
Definitely too violent for younger readers

Definitely got a lot of Wheel of Time vibes from this one!

Audio read by: Michael Kramer

Such a great book! If you are a character driven reader then maybe this won't be the book for you. Hopefully he starts fleshing the character in the second book. This one was more a world building type of book with mysteries abound everywhere you look. It is a great world. One that I will definitely read more about. I bought the second and third book halfway throug this book. 

Pretty good for a first novel. I had read his Will of The Many earlier this year, and that book was 5 stars, but I can see the growth between this book and that one.

A good start to this trilogy and I expected each book to get better. I am interested in where the story goes. I did see the twist at the end coming a mile away, but it was executed well. Book had a slow patch in the middle, but picked up pace towards the end and had a satisfying conclusion, while still setting up the next phase of the story.

9/10

It is absolutely astonishing for a writer debut. Deep world, interesting magic system, compelling characters, and plot twists every other chapter.

I am only deducting a single point here for the less eloquent prose, but I am diving directly into the second book!

4.5 stars! This was so good. The blurb telling Sanderson fans will like this was not wrong.
I liked sooo many of the characters! There was a lot of development. This is mostly plot driven but all the characters are so compelling.
Let my boy Caeden have some peace

Oh how I love a multi POV “complete your destiny” type fantasy read! I truly did not think that this book was going to be that great halfway through. I thought that it would be just good enough for 3 stars and keep me invested enough to read the rest of the trilogy. It was very slow but by no means boring due to the constant suspense of trying to put the clues together of who Caeden truly is since his memory was wiped, and everyone is slowly but surely figuring out their powers to fight the enemy. I loved all the characters but Davian and Caeden were a lot of fun to read about. The second half of the book was totally redeeming and so freaking awesome. I haven't been this excited to read a sequel in a long time. Very descriptive death scenes and simple but unique magic systems paired with a crazy “holy shit balls” ending and you have yourself a dandy of a book!

The writing is very good, but the story is 100% YA - and does not “suffer” of any trace of originality. I've already read most of its parts before, in other books, but probably its intended public did not - and in here they are well crafted. So I would recommend it to under 20 yo readers, but not for me. And hopefully mr. Islington will also write for adults eventually, cause I would like to read that.

I just don't get it. The world-building is wonky. Characters are boring. Magic system isn't that interesting. Won't read sequel.

There were some bright spots. The last 10% was pretty exciting, with some actual surprising reveals.

Most of it felt like a bit of a slog for me, mostly because:

(1) it had way more of a YA tone than i expected. I naiively thought from other reviews that it was a more grown-up fantasy story. YA can mean a lot of things besides the characters being YA's... for me it meant there was constant explicit disclosure of what everyone was feeling and thinking all the time. There was no subtext. Like the author's expectation that the reader could understand anything themselves was extremely low and had to be told “he felt worried”, “he felt X”, “she felt Y”. And some very dumb adolescent boy descriptions of the female characters. Like disney-princess-level stuff. And a lot of very basic moralizing like, “he was his friend... of COURSE he could trust him.” That kind of adolescent view of the world typical of YA writing.

(2) magic system was fairly annoying to read about. Lots of magic and blasting things, which is fine. After awhile i found the constant reveals of new things the magic-users could do, could not do, “in this situation i can do this, but not that”, and there was absolutely no reason why they would know most it. They just told you it was this way. Throughout the entire book reveals of what this magic could do or not do were happening, so i always felt like, well, there's no way for me as a reader to know if this thing that happened makes sense or not, because some new rule about how the magic works would just be arbitrarily proffered.

Tell me if it gets way better in the second book. Otherwise i'll try a different series.

It's a good book albeit a bit unoriginal. Hard to describe as the premise is the same old trope but there are sections of the book that pique and keep your interest going. IMO this is not the in the same league as Sanderson or Wheel of Time as some reviews mention but the reading pays off and I'm looking forward to starting the second book. Giving 4/5 as I really wish the magic system was a little more fleshed out and the motivations of antagonists were a little less boring.

Part of me wanted to devour this book because it was so good I didn't want to stop reading. But I wanted to savor the experience and just get into the world, and it was totally worth it! I love this book, it's one of my favorites of this year. I have high hopes for the second!

If you're a fan of Brandon Sanderson, you'll probably like this book. It has foreshadowing, a large cast of beloved characters, tons of plot twists and a great plot.

It has been eight months since I finished this book, and what I've learned from this experience is that I should never TBD a review and instead just do it immediately, as it is a certainty I just end up postponing it to the point that it's not even useful anymore.

I barely remember it, but the things I do remember were great. I liked Davian, the main character, but I got less interested in him from a specific plot point. I was very intrigued with Caedan. The plot points (and certain twists) were interesting.

Don't think I'll be continuing the trilogy though. I'm not reading enough as it is, so that's only reserved for obsessions :D Though I do recommend the book!

19/08/2021
It took me months but we made it! RTC when I have time.