Reviews - The Shadow Wand | The StoryGraph

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

861 reviews for:

The Shadow Wand

Laurie Forest

3.95 AVERAGE

ktullmann's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

septima's review against another edition

2.25

adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This just scraped a 3.0 for me because I enjoyed the first one and was still invested. In the first instalment, the tropey, overdramatic writing style fit the subject: a bunch of adolescents going to university for the first time, albeit with many supernatural elements mixed in. But taking this exact same approach into a high stakes war situation? It unfortunately falls flat on its face. The writing feels overindulgent and insanely overblown (this instalment could have been edited down to 60% the length and lost very little in substance) and the characters acting like dramatic teenagers just becomes really annoying. Elloren's "character arc" is drawn out unnecessarily and unnaturally and she's not even likeable for most of the book.

That being said, there was a good chunk in the middle that I still found enjoyable, mostly because the plot was moving too fast for all the characters' dramatic monologues to get in the way. I do wish this had been pitched as a trilogy because with a decent amount of trimming down, there's plenty there to make for an entertaining and well paced read.

Edit: I've had to downrate this because the longer I think about it, the more annoyed I get. What on earth was that weird magical compulsion storyline for? The whole theme of the story has been how indoctrination works, but now we're going to pretend that it doesn't work on this particular race? And please, can we stop with the "everyone is young and super hot and is madly attracted to one specific other person at first sight", it just reads like an extremely straight Instagram ad. Given the only character that was coded disabled has now been magically "fixed" and given a glow up, it's also getting really offensive. You can do tropey and silly without being offensive.

mel_4172's review against another edition

2.0

I honestly don't know what to think about these books. Part of me wanted to finish them but I skimmed so much of the 3 books in this series so far. There are too many people coming and going. Too many names that are similar or just can't figure out how to pronounce. The MC, Ren is such a doormat sometimes it kills me to keep reading. The book builds and builds and build yet doesn't really get anywhere.