Even though we don’t see much of the wide and varied cast of the first two novels, I still love being back with Elloren and the gang. The Shadow Wand needed a bit more tension and plot for me.īut for all that, that’s not to say that this book wasn’t entertaining. There was quite a lot of the book that felt like a training montage, which, while I enjoy a good one every once in a while, was stretched out too long. While that created an interesting dynamic between Elloren and Lukas, I feel like there could have been a bit of tension if Yvan had shown up once or twice.įor much of the book, it felt like the classic YA middle book where the Chosen One heroine (oh hey, look, another trope that this series fell into! Whoopee!) has to harness her abilities and build her army. And by “interesting,” I mean “entertaining the notion that one party may or may not be dead.” We don’t see any of Yvan for the entire book, and the romantic aspects are primarily focused on Lukas.
The love triangle between Elloren, Lukas, and Yvan is expanded upon, but in…an interesting way. At least they’re…okay? Maybe? Sort of?Īnd…Forest is deeeeefinitely toying with our feelings here. I liked seeing where Wynter was (because I still have a major soft spot for her, and she deserves so much better), but I…don’t know if it contributed to the story much at all. We also get to check in on a few favorites from the previous books, including Tierney and Wynter. The first portion of the book jumps between the POVs of several, completely new characters they show up later, and those chapters gave a little bit of backstory for them, but I don’t think entire chapters were needed to explain their backgrounds.
Remember how I said in my review of The Iron Flower that book 2 didn’t fall into the trap of middle-book-slump? I seem to have forgotten then that the series is slated to be a series of five books, making The Shadow Wand the middle book.Īnd I hate to say it, but there’s some serious disappointing middle book syndrome going on here.įrom the start, I feel like at least 100-150 pages could have been cut out (for clarification, The Shadow Wand clocks in at 554 pages).
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