A review by thesurvivorreader
Shadow of a Dark Queen by Raymond E. Feist

3.0

I enjoyed reading this book, but honestly it wasn't anything too special. If it weren't for Atticus I probably wouldn't be too tempted to continue on with the series, but I'm also not like dreading continuing with the series. I think my biggest issue is that I just didn't really connect with Feist's writing at all. I'm not a fan of an omniscient POV to begin with and then add on top of that the fact that Feist uses lots of terminology I don't understand and describes action really poorly and it just created a situation where I wasn't able to enjoy large chunks of the story for the sole reason of Feists writing not working for me. I do think that the plot was solid however. Nothing too amazing but definitely enough to keep me interested. The thing that really kept me reading was Miranda. Chapters following her were few and far between, but when we did get them I was always fascinated and glued to the story. She was by far my favorite character. I also really liked Roo and I'm excited to see how he progresses as a character. Some other stand outs for me were Sho Pi, Calis, and Nacor. Calis in particular is a fascinating character and I love learning about him and his race. On the other hand Erik was a pretty bad main character. He's just so incredibly bland and boring to follow. I said the same thing about Rand though so there is always a chance he could grow on me, but for now I really dislike following Eric. The world building also wasn't the strongest in this book. The glimpses that we got of the world and the politics were so fascinating and I loved it, but it was not leaned on nearly enough. This might be because this is technically like the 12th book in the series, but I really just wish that we had gotten more. I feel like I'm left with no clear understanding of the cultures or magic in this book which is a bummer. So yeah, I'd say I loved the bits of world building we got, was intrigued by the plot, and enjoyed many characters, but found the writing to be poor and the world to not be expanded as much as it could have been. Overall this was a solid book, but it definitely didn't feel like anything too special to me.