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A review by cupiscent
Shadow & Betrayal by Daniel Abraham
5.0
Two books in this, and they really are two almost completely different stories, including some of the same characters in the second book, a dozen or so years later and at the other end of the country. There are some themes that carry over, some that counterpoint.
First, let me talk the world and the rich, glorious detail of it that seeps through in the crack of every lovely sentence Abraham crafts. Because I'd read a hundred and more pages of this without any clear driving sense of the story, but the world was just so magnificent and interesting and rich that I didn't care. It's intricate and charming and ruthless and I could just marry the concept of magic through binding a concept in poetry. MARRY IT.
When I finished A Shadow in Summer, I was a little confused about how small and careful and gentle a story it was - a tale of how much a person can take and bend, or break, and what we'll do to avoid greater horrors. This isn't something you see a lot of in fantasy - fantasy tends to be about the greater horrors, about war and acts of fell enormity and magic that can change the fate of the world.
Having finished the whole thing, I look back and see that Summer, too, was a tale of self-authored personal tragedies. It's just that A Betrayal in Winter was a sweeping, blistering, majestic delivery of tight-bound, screaming-inevitability self-authored personal tragedies. It's Shakespearean. It's Russian. It's a thousand twists of the knife that cannot be dodged without changing, fundamentally, who the characters are.
I am so impressed.
So while I have absolutely no idea what could possibly transpire in the third and fourth books of the series - there's still no driving direction to the overall story, and it wouldn't surprise me to jump another dozen years and to another location with another character (I have my suspicions who) - I will be getting on board, because this is some great storytelling write up my personal-tragedies alley.
First, let me talk the world and the rich, glorious detail of it that seeps through in the crack of every lovely sentence Abraham crafts. Because I'd read a hundred and more pages of this without any clear driving sense of the story, but the world was just so magnificent and interesting and rich that I didn't care. It's intricate and charming and ruthless and I could just marry the concept of magic through binding a concept in poetry. MARRY IT.
When I finished A Shadow in Summer, I was a little confused about how small and careful and gentle a story it was - a tale of how much a person can take and bend, or break, and what we'll do to avoid greater horrors. This isn't something you see a lot of in fantasy - fantasy tends to be about the greater horrors, about war and acts of fell enormity and magic that can change the fate of the world.
Having finished the whole thing, I look back and see that Summer, too, was a tale of self-authored personal tragedies. It's just that A Betrayal in Winter was a sweeping, blistering, majestic delivery of tight-bound, screaming-inevitability self-authored personal tragedies. It's Shakespearean. It's Russian. It's a thousand twists of the knife that cannot be dodged without changing, fundamentally, who the characters are.
I am so impressed.
So while I have absolutely no idea what could possibly transpire in the third and fourth books of the series - there's still no driving direction to the overall story, and it wouldn't surprise me to jump another dozen years and to another location with another character (I have my suspicions who) - I will be getting on board, because this is some great storytelling write up my personal-tragedies alley.