Review
Will Wight was an author introduced to me by Hamad (The Book Prescription). Funny enough he recommended the Cradle series, but I instead started The Elder Empire series. What makes the series worth the try, though, is its playfulness with style. The series is comprised of six books [1:1] each parallel to one another. Readers are given the choice to follow Shera an assassin moving beyond the shadows, or Calder a pirate threading the vastness of the sea. Moreover, we are also given the opportunity to go through their story on a straight line: reading one from the beginning to end then starting over again with the other; or, reading each beginning side-by-by. Curious, isn’t it? I might read the stories side-by-side. But who knows, I might change my mind. Anyway… Given my love for the shadows, of course, I chose to begin with Shera.
Of Shadow and Sea is such an intriguing novel with a powerful and compelling start. It instantly transported me to this dark and dingy world of killing traitors and stealing cursed artifacts. The concept was truly fascinating, but it wasn’t as unique as I expected it to be. If you’ve read enough manga or watched enough anime, you’d know that searching for cursed artifacts is extremely common in this type of story. We can have a safe assumption, then, that the author watches anime. However, that is not the point. The point lies with the execution of the story.
Jumping from two timelines, the novel follows the present and reminisces the past. It was anti-climatic at times, with poor placement and jagged transitions—dragging the entire story into an absolute chaos. Simplistic as it may be, it was distracting all throughout the next half of the novel.
Moreover, as much as I loved the characters in the beginning, they fell off as the story progresses. Especially our main character, Shera. I adored her at the start with her peculiar personality and loyalty, but she became bland later on. Her sleepy attitude really rubbed off and it took so much for me not to fall asleep myself.
The narration, similar to all that I’ve already said, began with such strength. I liked the distinction and tone Emily Woo Zeller did, but she became quite robotic towards the end. The entirety of it was like a thread that slowly overlaps one another and became a ball of knot that was hard to squeeze through.
I have such mixed thoughts for this novel. I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to people. Most especially if they are interested in trying a book with this sort of setup. However, I do find the entirety of it too weak. The writing was definitely there but the execution was poorly done. Here’s to hoping the sequel gets better.
