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A review by thomas_edmund
When Shadows Grow Tall by Maressa Voss
4.0
(Advance Review through NetGalley)
When Shadows Grow Tall was an interesting read for me. Fantasy is a favourite genre for me, however I feel there are a lot of things to get right and a lot of risky tropes that can ruin a book (I suppose that's not unique to fantasy, but I have a sense fails in fantasy are more severe).
The strengths of Voss' novel are the great pacing - I don't think I experienced boredom at any stage of the story, nor little desire to speed things up to get to the 'good parts' the story had a good balance of exposition and world building, very epic and vivid action, and overall was always fun to be in the pages of this one.
Our MCs are Lovelace - a good, albeit rebellious, ranger mage who is desperate to save young mages from a an evil outcast who keeps finding and murdering emerging mages before his order can recruit them.
And Kylene, whose story is a little more mysterious - her father has disappeared after being revealed to be too seditious for the dystopian regime in place over 'The Grasp' and Kylene is willing to risk it all to find him.
While the story was good fun there were a few flaws in my eyes.
The prose was on the odd occasion, a bit much, I never realized a dawn could be "fresh and crisp as a new apple" but also break "as easy as an egg." To be honest, its not quite purple but there were moments that the simile were just enough to push me out of the story. (Although I will say use of the word 'Lumpsucker' wins a lot of points from me)
While the world building was really well delivered throughout the story rather than big info dumps, it felt like the whole story was interspersed with lore and particularly towards the end I really wanted more ACTION not more exposition. Especially the last few chapters - there was a bit of a sense of 'first book in a series' syndrome where not a huge amount of significant plot points happened as obviously enough needed to be saved for later books.
My final beef was that the villains were just a bit shallow and cheesy, their dialogue very "mwah ha ha." while the mythos around them was suitable, the delivery of their actual presence was somewhat flat.
Overall this book is great for fantasy lovers, especially if you're looking for intense magic battles but based in a relatively gritty grimy mundane world.
When Shadows Grow Tall was an interesting read for me. Fantasy is a favourite genre for me, however I feel there are a lot of things to get right and a lot of risky tropes that can ruin a book (I suppose that's not unique to fantasy, but I have a sense fails in fantasy are more severe).
The strengths of Voss' novel are the great pacing - I don't think I experienced boredom at any stage of the story, nor little desire to speed things up to get to the 'good parts' the story had a good balance of exposition and world building, very epic and vivid action, and overall was always fun to be in the pages of this one.
Our MCs are Lovelace - a good, albeit rebellious, ranger mage who is desperate to save young mages from a an evil outcast who keeps finding and murdering emerging mages before his order can recruit them.
And Kylene, whose story is a little more mysterious - her father has disappeared after being revealed to be too seditious for the dystopian regime in place over 'The Grasp' and Kylene is willing to risk it all to find him.
While the story was good fun there were a few flaws in my eyes.
The prose was on the odd occasion, a bit much, I never realized a dawn could be "fresh and crisp as a new apple" but also break "as easy as an egg." To be honest, its not quite purple but there were moments that the simile were just enough to push me out of the story. (Although I will say use of the word 'Lumpsucker' wins a lot of points from me)
While the world building was really well delivered throughout the story rather than big info dumps, it felt like the whole story was interspersed with lore and particularly towards the end I really wanted more ACTION not more exposition. Especially the last few chapters - there was a bit of a sense of 'first book in a series' syndrome where not a huge amount of significant plot points happened as obviously enough needed to be saved for later books.
My final beef was that the villains were just a bit shallow and cheesy, their dialogue very "mwah ha ha." while the mythos around them was suitable, the delivery of their actual presence was somewhat flat.
Overall this book is great for fantasy lovers, especially if you're looking for intense magic battles but based in a relatively gritty grimy mundane world.