SPOILERS!!

Why didn't I like this book? Evil Being who is responsible for many deaths and wants to control the kingdom *could* have been killed by one of the Merrie Band of Warriors out to get him, but he isn't so that more books in the series could be written. This is the kind of plotting which drives me INSANE and I refuse to read books by authors who do this. Cassandra Clare (City of Bones) or Rachel Caine (Ill Wind 1) did this and it's the reason I won't read anything by them.

I'm not sure I would have continued with the series in any case. I didn't care for the heroine who was always late, hungry, and disheveled. Instead of humanizing her, it got annoying. And you would think that the person who called her out to secretly help heal would make sure she ate properly afterwards.

I am disappointed because I really want to like Sagara's books. Her LJ blog where she talks about raising her autistic son is fascinating.

The story was interesting enough but was often confusing. I didn't like that several times something would happen and, at the end of the scene, you wonder why the author just wasted your time with that. Much, much later you realize what she was trying to establish with the scene, but I really would have liked it if the author had made the point of the scene clearer at the time it occurred.

Also, the author attempts to create a mystery (as if there wasn't enough) by withholding from the reader information that the view point character knows. Kaylin knows what happened in her childhood that makes her attack Severn several times during the book, but the author deliberately keeps what happened very vague, even when Kaylin is directly thinking about it. It remains a mystery until the middle of the book, but hiding it doesn't add anything and only makes Kaylin's motives more confusing. Whenever an author hides something about the main character like this, it has the side-affect of keeping the reader at a remove from her. It is harder for the reader to really care about or bond with the character.

Also, I liked Kaylin well enough, but it's more firmly established that she's annoying and exasperating to everyone around her than it is that people are fiercely loyal to her (rather than simply affectionate) so that they would risk the fate of mankind by leaving her alive.

The heroine's poor grammar made the story a bit confusing at times and got downright distracting if I was tired while reading. I was also a bit annoyed that the author felt she needed to repeat minor points than had no direct bearing on the story (for example, she makes the point several times that Aerians use stools because a chair with a back doesn't work for them). Another annoyance was her repeatedly saying that a lifted chin was a universal sign of submission only to later have Kaylin wonder if the Dragon race also used this Leontine sign of submission. That's not exactly 'universal' then, is it?

On the other hand, I appreciated that Severn steadily shows Kaylin his love throughout the story, even though he knows she doesn't understand and isn't ready to accept it. That's a better romance than having two strangers jump in bed together, in my opinion.

I really enjoyed West's Into the Darklands series so when I read the blurb for this series I thought I'd give it a whirl. I was so not impressed. It was strange, for one, that she basically left out everything that a reader would need to know what's going on with the plot. What were the different races? Could we have gotten a better description of how their society functioned? I wasn't really even sure if the Hawks were like some sort of detectives or if they were just random guards? What were the wolves to them? I mean I got that they tracked people through the city but for what? WHAT THE HECK WAS OUTCASTE? OH we got a half a sentence description on that 72% into the book. Thanks for letting me ponder on that all the way through.

I had more questions than answers the entire way through the book. Like literally two characters would get done with a conversation and I would have had no clue what they were talking about? And why they all seemed to read each others mind and didn't feel the need to continue voicing aloud their suspicions. And we were somehow supposed to guess what their suspicions were?

Ugh...I am really just irritated I paid as much as I did for the dang thing. I mean there were a few characters that showed potential to be interesting but I am not finishing it to find out for sure and I'm not buying any of the others.

love a pure of heart, dumb of ass heroine

I smell potential!


When I saw this book has over 500 pages, I was sure I'd be really bored and it'll probably go in the DNF pile. But after I started reading it, I couldn't put it down! I finished it in a day and a half and couldn't wait to start the next one.

This book is more HF than UF. Ok, ok, fine, I can't find the "urban" at all, so why do people say it's an UF.?!
True, if I think of it as HF, then it probably doesn't deserve 4 stars, so yeah, let's just leave it at this...


HF, as in high fantasy, btw.
The main difference between the two being that that UFs are based in the real world (as much as that can be). We see modern technology or at least some semblance of "real". In HF, however, everything is of a different world, from the lore to the cities, systems, characters, etc. I'm still waiting for Kaylin to grab a gun from somewhere and just shoot the bad guy at one point...

Anyway, it had a wonderful world-builder, the politics were great and engaging -yes, I actually said that politics were fun- and the MC has a lot of potential. The whole world is a bit more complicated than your normal "UF" (I'll just call it that) but not as hard to understand as in some HFs.

Dunno what to think about Kaylin yet, I like it that she's damn clumsy and not all-powerful (yet) but most of all I love that she's got a great humor.

Worth trying out at least.

*4.5 stars*

I'd bounced off the opening a year or two ago - it didn't seem like a book I would necessarily enjoy - but the excerpt I'd read did leave me just curious enough to pick it up when I found it in a bookstore the other day...

...and I'm so glad I did. It turned out to be my favorite fantasy novel for adults that I've read in ages. It has the fast pace and banter of a lot of urban fantasies, but it's a high fantasy novel where the magic really does frequently evoke a true sense of wonder. Best of all are the wonderful characters. I loved the heroine, I loved her conflicts, and I found the book as a whole intensely emotional and gripping. I can't wait to read Book 2 in the series!

I was honestly confused for most of this book. If there had been a key for some of the harder words. I'm still clueless as to what a Barrani is. I think I know but there was only once sentence that kind of clued me in.

Kaylin wasn't my favorite character ever but she was good enough. I'm still mostly clueless as to what her powers are.

Also, what is Nighshade and her's relationship exactly? It still confuses me.

Edit: July 2021

So this book is just as confusing as the first time. Having read 5 of the books has given me a few more details to rely on but this is still a thinker book. Not entirely in a good way.

So I love the Leotines. Marcus is one of my favorite characters. I also like the dragons. Those are probably two of my favorite species from this series.

I love how caring Kaylin is to the orphans.

I hate how little she seems to be paid but she is also always late so I guess it's lucky she's employed at all.

I love her healing powers! So cool. Her other powers confuse me still.

I want to know more about the Emperor!? I wonder if she ever meets him?

I actually really enjoyed this start to what looks like a very long series (didn’t know that when I opened the book)! There are a lot of unanswered questions and things I wish the author had helped us understand a bit more, but it is still intriguing enough that I want to continue and uncover all the depths that are hinted at!

From the other reviews here on Goodreads, I am relieved to see that I am not the only one whose dominant feeling while reading Cast in Shadow was one of confusion. Michelle Sagara has clearly come up with a creative, perhaps even compelling world. It’s populated by all sorts of fascinating species: the immortal Barrani and Dragons and Tha'lani, the mortal humans and Leontine and Aerians. Elantra is a city like many others in fantasy, poised on that brink of industrialization, the throbbing heart of an empire riddled with corruption, magical or otherwise. Amidst all this, Sagara gives us a female protagonist who has clawed her way up from poverty and destitution to be the youngest member of the Hawks, the crime-solving unit of Elantra’s judiciary. And Kaylin’s stake in this case is personal, with all the attendant baggage and issues one would expect. With all of these components, Cast in Shadow should be an awesome urban fantasy thriller. But it’s not.

As others have singled out, the problem is one of context. Sagara is inconsistent in how and when she chooses to deliver her exposition. The first few chapters are an almost overwhelming soup of names and information; then the flow diminishes to a mere trickle for the rest of the novel. Time and again, characters will be poised on the brink of a big revelation, only for them to stop up their mouths and say, “No, you aren’t ready for that.” Half of this book consists of various people from different species alluding to aspects of their culture that never gets explained. Sometimes, when an author does this, it’s to build tension and make the audience yearn to know more. Indeed I did—except I never felt like I got a payoff at the end. I just felt confused.

The plot itself is simple enough to understand. Kaylin used to be an impoverished child, orphaned after the death of her mother, living in the fiefdom of Nightshade. Think urban gang warfare in a pre-industrial city. Eventually (we’re never quite told how) she escapes this area of Elantra and manages to enrol in the Hawks, where she becomes an up-and-coming investigator. She has intense, personal relationships with high-ranking members, such as Sergeant Marcus Kassan, a Leontine (every bit as lion-like as the name implies) and the Hawklord himself, an Aerian. Kaylin is special in every sense of the word, for she has magical powers she can’t trust herself to control. These make her a danger, one that the Hawklord has perhaps unwisely vouchsafed for. And when it turns out that the murders are death magic sacrifices designed to turn Kaylin into a superpowered killing machine … well, that spoils everyone’s day.

Cast in Shadow is not a complicated book, so there is no reason it should be so hard to follow. Yet I repeatedly found myself wonder who was present when characters were conversing, or indeed just what was happening during a particular scene. Sagara' description, like her exposition, is inconsistent in its ebb and flow. At times she belabours the nature of Kaylin’s wardrobe, the arrangement of a courtyard or a tower … and then suddenly, the verbiage gives way to conversations about magic or history, and just as suddenly I have no idea where these people are or what they’re doing.

It’s disheartening, because I would like to love this book. Kaylin is competent but flawed, wounded from her childhood in Nightshade and mistrustful of the people working with her on this case. Sagara does a good job portraying Kaylin’s growth throughout the novel, as she struggles with working with Severn, whom she blames for an unforgivable act while they were both in Nightshade. I really enjoyed watching Kaylin grapple with the various forces that seemed to be subtly—or not so subtly—manipulating and using her for their own ends. In this respect, I was fully willing to immerse myself into the politics of Elantra—if only Sagara had managed to make that possible.

And as I said above, the world of Elantra itself is rich with possibility. The city is cosmopolitan in nature, with the high court dominated by the immortal races while the mortals go about their lives in the more mercantile areas. It appears that the Emperor is a Dragon, a species whose members are humanoid for the most part but can transform into a more conventional serpentine form and wreak devastation. In many ways, Sagara’s species don’t seem all that original or creative—the Aerians have wings; the Leontines are lions! But, even if she doesn’t always communicate it as clearly as I would have liked, there are definitely hints of more complicated cultures underlying all these species. That’s something I would love to see more often in urban fantasy, which usually constrains its non-human ventures to more stereotypical conceptions of elves and dwarfs and ghouls….

Cast in Shadow is a book burdened by flawed writing. At its centre lies a good, old-fashioned mystery—multiple homicides with a clear intent in mind that means nothing good for Kaylin or for the Empire. From the ending, it is clear that Sagara has an entire series conceived in her mind—but I’m not sure I’m willing to read the next book. In the tenuous balance between storytelling and style, Sagara excels at the former but flounders at the latter.

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I love the concept of this book. However, the sentence structure and structure of the book were, for me, awful. I found it very difficult to follow and often got confused as to what was going on and whom was actually speaking. I had such hopes...but it was a let down for me.

I feel like I would have LOVED this book when I was 13.

As a fair warning, not a lot (ie nothing) is explained or described. The author expects you to implicitly understand the layouts of buildings and magic dealings without any explanation.

The main character is imperfect, and that is likable, but that is pretty much the only likable aspect of her personality. She is rude, impatient, whiny, and ignorant of everything around her. Every other character treats her with kindness and respect (OK, maybe not EVERYONE, but most) and she is frustratingly stupid back at them over and over again.

The world also relies on nonhuman creatures, and expects you to just happily stay in ignorance (like the protagonist) of what their abilities are and what they look like. It wasn't until the END of the book that I figured out that the Aeriens (or however you spell it) weren't gryphons, but... angels? Huh. Okay. So you have cat people, lizard people, elves, and angels. Right. The author barely gives you ANY tidbits about (what should be) FASCINATING races and again, expects you to fill in the blanks or not care.

This book really "vaguebooks" the entire story through. "I'M VERY UPSET!!" the book shouts. You say, "oh no! What is wrong?!" and it responds "I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!"
Even the author's EXPLANATIONS of the story don't make sense. They consist of basically saying, "She now understood. She knew what she had to do." Gee, thanks for keeping your reader in the loop.

The IDEA of the plot (supernatural murders with nonhuman characters! oh YES!) and the races and the world are interesting. But it's written like terrible fanfic. The author expects you to already know the characters, world and races, so she doesn't bother describing it. Unfortunately, it's not fanfic. It's a published novel.
Not planning on pursuing the rest of this YA series.

I'm usually discouraged from reading a book when i see so many bad reviews but i'm so happy that i decided to try it anyway!I was pleasantly surprised,i really enjoyed it and can't wait to see what happens next.The pacing is neither too slow nor too fast,the characters and the plot are very original and entertaining.I loved reading about the different races and costumes.I admit that sometimes i've found myself a little lost at the beginning because you find yourself directly in this new world and you don't understand what's going on but slowly i began to understand and i loved it!

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