3.8k reviews for:

L'ombra del tempo passato

James Islington

4.06 AVERAGE

seastheday's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

After reading The Will of the Many, this was a bit disappointing. I cared about the story, but I wasn’t fidgeting to pick it up.

The introduction made me really think it was going to mostly be about Davian. The sudden execution of different perspectives was jarring. I felt like Davian needed more explaining in the beginning. He had so much potential. Then the momentum died for other characters. Then the momentum for each of THEM died for a new character to be introduced. At one point about 150 pages in, I asked myself, “what do I even KNOW about Davian??” He’s immediately shown to be smart, JI told us that he was different and displayed right away. It was told to us in the synopsis on the back as well. But it felt like he wasn’t even a main character for large parts of the book when he is easily the most important character. Then we get this Rocky montage that is brief with no real scenes. It was somehow a closed door training montage.
Ugh and don’t get me started on the relationship between Wirr and Ash then Davian and Ash. The relationship was NOT BUILT. We are just supposed to believe that it’s there? Even though we don’t know what it’s like or what the differences are between the two? It was really frustrating because I like Ashalia as a character. I think she had the best story line of all of the POV’s we are given.
I think the main problem is that we are given too many POV’s for character building whilst we are doing MAJOR world building. It becomes confusing and hard to care or remember different plot points.

I didn’t care about Elociens death as much as I wish I did. I wasn’t surprised about Wirr. It was so obvious. Caden could’ve been the best surprise and the most insane character but that was muddled and shoved in with the rest of the story, world building, character building, plot building and even simple plot remembrance.

It is very obvious that this is a first book and originally self published. I think the author needs to take a page from Samatha Shannon and rewrite the series since he has more time as a professional writer and more expertise. And probably a new editor.

If you read this book do not read any of the definitions of characters or the glossary. It will spoil major things. Only use it for pronunciations.

nwhitelaw_05's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

emsemce123's review against another edition

3.5

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It takes awhile for the story to really get going, like 200 pages. Once all the characters are introduced and where they need to be, then I feel like it gets into the meat and potatoes and everything before that just feels like setup. With this large of a cast too, some stories are more interesting than others. I would not call this a beginner fantasy nor would I recommend it to beginners. I would honestly suggest taking notes as you go, I wish that I had. (The later books add a glossary) I have some questions left about both magic systems, the limitations and how certain stuff works. I'm reviewing this from the point of view if having already finished the second book as well. And the answers I got weren't the most informative but I appreciate the little I got. There's also a lot of time travel elements in this book that are doubled down on even more in the sequel that I feel are to this story's detriment. Time travel can be great but I feel like it is extremely difficult to pull off and even rarer to pull off well. As big as this story is and as much as there is going on, and it is a lot, the time travel elements just make it even more convoluted. Multiple characters can also be other multiple characters from different points in time. Again, it's complicated and I'm sure some people will love it if I was more interested I would too but I'm not and so it's not very engaging when that's the stuff you get more of. This sounds like I'm being very megative, Im just middle of the road on it, but I will be continuing the trilogy.

emvili's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

gregorysgreen611's review against another edition

3.0

I'm hoping this book was just laying groundwork for future books. The magic systems seem cool, but don't really feel well-defined quite yet. I like the characters. I like the alternating POVs and parallel story lines. I'm hoping there's a little bit more to the plot in the future.