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tracey_stewart's review
4.0
This was the first Susan Dexter I read in my reread, and it was my first clue that it had been longer than I thought since I read these books - too long. I might have reread them, but it would have to have been at least ten years, I think, for all of them. Ten years and hundreds of books later, I've had plenty of time to forget almost everything: perfect.
I've started with The Wizard's Shadow, which starts with a murder, or an execution. The impression is of something dark, something hunted, being pinned down and put, terribly, to death - very effective writing. It doesn't entirely die, though - a shadow takes shelter unter a rock, and settles to wait.
It has a long wait on the seldom-traveled path, until Crocken the peddlar comes along. The poor bugger has had a terrible time of it, with a string of bad luck, insult to injury, that has sent him off on a trading journey farther than he's ever gone before to recoup losses he's suffered. The ill luck hits him again, in the form of his bad-tempered mule and a fall ... which along with knocking him out dislodges a certain rock along the trail ... And when Crocken comes around he is no longer alone. His shadow is gone and has been replaced with a new one, one which, hard as it is to accept even in a world in which magic is common, can speak to him. It makes him a classic offer which cannot be refused: divert his path to the kingdom of Armyn, with the shadow trailing along behind, and he will be paid handsomely. If not ...
Crocken knows it to be a bad bargain - the way is difficult, and long, and very much not where he was headed - but there isn't much else he can do. He obeys, and the arduous journey is only the beginning of a complicated situation he feels completely unequipped for: a morass of motive and suspicion and very dark magic in the castle, a foreign bride for the young to-be-crowned king, and the mystery of what - who - the shadow is, or was, and what exactly it wants.
I loved it. Wizard's Shadow, and every other book I have by Susan Dexter, is exactly what I love best in a book: intelligent, funny, wonderful characters in a beautifully created setting involved in fascinating situations. I made guesses about what was going on - guessed wrong - didn't care, because I was enjoying the book too much. The story did not end up as I'd feared, with the typical everyone-neatly-paired-off trope, and I was glad. I hadn't planned to move on to the Tristan books, but after Shadow I didn't have any more of a choice than poor old Crocken: I had to keep going with Susan Dexter's work. I only wish there was more. ~Stewartry
I've started with The Wizard's Shadow, which starts with a murder, or an execution. The impression is of something dark, something hunted, being pinned down and put, terribly, to death - very effective writing. It doesn't entirely die, though - a shadow takes shelter unter a rock, and settles to wait.
It has a long wait on the seldom-traveled path, until Crocken the peddlar comes along. The poor bugger has had a terrible time of it, with a string of bad luck, insult to injury, that has sent him off on a trading journey farther than he's ever gone before to recoup losses he's suffered. The ill luck hits him again, in the form of his bad-tempered mule and a fall ... which along with knocking him out dislodges a certain rock along the trail ... And when Crocken comes around he is no longer alone. His shadow is gone and has been replaced with a new one, one which, hard as it is to accept even in a world in which magic is common, can speak to him. It makes him a classic offer which cannot be refused: divert his path to the kingdom of Armyn, with the shadow trailing along behind, and he will be paid handsomely. If not ...
Crocken knows it to be a bad bargain - the way is difficult, and long, and very much not where he was headed - but there isn't much else he can do. He obeys, and the arduous journey is only the beginning of a complicated situation he feels completely unequipped for: a morass of motive and suspicion and very dark magic in the castle, a foreign bride for the young to-be-crowned king, and the mystery of what - who - the shadow is, or was, and what exactly it wants.
I loved it. Wizard's Shadow, and every other book I have by Susan Dexter, is exactly what I love best in a book: intelligent, funny, wonderful characters in a beautifully created setting involved in fascinating situations. I made guesses about what was going on - guessed wrong - didn't care, because I was enjoying the book too much. The story did not end up as I'd feared, with the typical everyone-neatly-paired-off trope, and I was glad. I hadn't planned to move on to the Tristan books, but after Shadow I didn't have any more of a choice than poor old Crocken: I had to keep going with Susan Dexter's work. I only wish there was more. ~Stewartry
metaphorosis's review
3.0
2.5 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
An itinerant peddler is partially possessed by the shadow of a dead and vengeful mage.
Review
The only joy of culling a library is the chance to go back through all the books and pick out the ones you don’t remember well. If I re-read all of those, I’d never get this slow-moving project done, but I did pick a few.
The Wizard’s Shadow is one from the category – Don’t Remember At All. And there’s some reason for that, unfortunately. It’s a better tale than I remembered, though few of the details rang any bells. It’s got a credible, somewhat unusual character at the core – a peddler driven by a dead mage’s shadow. But it never troubles to delve very deeply into its characters, or its hero’s motivations and interactions, which means that most of his interesting credibility goes by the wayside in a plot that’s more sketched than implemented. Dexter seems more interested in the economics and the setting than in the human interactions, and it’s a shame, because there’s a good deal of potential here. The result is a pleasant but forgettable novel. It’s the kind of book that would be a good world-expansion side book. It’s possible that it was intended as such, since the book suggests Dexter also has a trilogy or two (and ISFDB says they’re in the same world). Unfortunately, reading this wasn’t enough to draw me on to those. As a standalone, the book is nice, but a bit …[shrug]. I wish Dexter had done more to develop it.
The central mystery – the shadow of the mage – is more impulse than thread, and is more dropped than resolved at the end, though not in a really frustrating way. That same laxity applies to some extent to the relationships, where, after a feint at honest emotion, Dexter falls back to tested tropes and formula.
Summary
An itinerant peddler is partially possessed by the shadow of a dead and vengeful mage.
Review
The only joy of culling a library is the chance to go back through all the books and pick out the ones you don’t remember well. If I re-read all of those, I’d never get this slow-moving project done, but I did pick a few.
The Wizard’s Shadow is one from the category – Don’t Remember At All. And there’s some reason for that, unfortunately. It’s a better tale than I remembered, though few of the details rang any bells. It’s got a credible, somewhat unusual character at the core – a peddler driven by a dead mage’s shadow. But it never troubles to delve very deeply into its characters, or its hero’s motivations and interactions, which means that most of his interesting credibility goes by the wayside in a plot that’s more sketched than implemented. Dexter seems more interested in the economics and the setting than in the human interactions, and it’s a shame, because there’s a good deal of potential here. The result is a pleasant but forgettable novel. It’s the kind of book that would be a good world-expansion side book. It’s possible that it was intended as such, since the book suggests Dexter also has a trilogy or two (and ISFDB says they’re in the same world). Unfortunately, reading this wasn’t enough to draw me on to those. As a standalone, the book is nice, but a bit …[shrug]. I wish Dexter had done more to develop it.
The central mystery – the shadow of the mage – is more impulse than thread, and is more dropped than resolved at the end, though not in a really frustrating way. That same laxity applies to some extent to the relationships, where, after a feint at honest emotion, Dexter falls back to tested tropes and formula.
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