Reviews - The Way of Shadows

1.53k reviews for:

The Way of Shadows

Brent Weeks

3.9 AVERAGE

jess_sauer_corkery's review

3.75

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

afonsob's review

3.5

dark fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Brent doles out trauma to his characters like a grandfather gives out candy to his grandkids. He has created an extremely violent world where poor children are forced to suffer the most inhumane abuses. Although the traumatic events are revisited, they don’t seem to bear as much weight on the characters as they should. This is one of many symptoms of the problem that plagues Brent’s main characters characters: they are all, at heart, superheroes. They just get up and get on with business and defeat 30 “elite” soldiers with ease. Why go through the trouble of emphasising over and over how elite the Khalidoran highlanders are to then have them pose absolutely no credible threat whatsoever to the main character?

Every female character has luscious breasts, flowing long hair and voluptuous curves. They are all either whores (literally and metaphorically) or virgins. But the two principal female characters at least have interesting personalities. Momma K has secrets and history and a perceptive inner life. Elene seems to fall more on the absent-minded hot girl trope, but at times reveals a quietly complicated relationship with her scars.

The storytelling is windingly long at times, but with enough plot twists to keep you on your toes. While the plot plays to some tropes in the genre, it is mostly well executed.

Guess I’ll wait to see if learning that his whole family is dead, and immediately afterward seeing his newly-wed wife bleed out before his eyes and then jumping into a pit of mad homicidal cannibals is trauma enough for a rich aristocratic boy (he’s 20, he’s a child) who’s been sheltered all his life.

thebrokenhagofwinter's review

2.0

Basically this was a DNF for me at 60%. I do not have the patience, and the mountain of tropes in this book made me eye roll incessantly. Nothing about this book held depth aside from the fight scenes. There were far too many wasteful conversations between characters that held no weight in the story line. The MC played to the whole pendulum of morality. (Good vs. bad) Is it too much to ask that they just don't care because life is more about grey areas than black and white? I do not understand the point the author tried to make. Over all I was disappointed because this book had been highly recommended. I am starting to believe that "highly recommended" means that I will not like it.