2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Review: A Sleight of Shadows by Kat Howard

About the Book

After taking down the source of the corruption of the Unseen World, Sydney is left with almost no magical ability. Feeling estranged from herself, she is determined to find a way back to her status as one of the world’s most dangerous magicians. Unfortunately, she needs to do this quickly: the House of Shadows, the hell on earth that shaped her into who she was, the place she sacrificed everything to destroy, is rebuilding itself.

“The House of shadows sits on bones. All of the sacrifices, all of the magicians who died in Shadows, they’re buried beneath the foundations. Bones hold magic.”

The magic of the Unseen World is acting strangely, faltering, bleeding out from the edges. Determined to keep the House of Shadows from returning to power and to defeat the magicians who want nothing more than to have it back, Sydney turns to extremes in a desperate attempt to regain her sacrificed magic. She is forced to decide what she will give up and what she will lose and whether what must be destroyed is not only the House of Shadows, but the Unseen World itself.

World Fantasy Award finalist Kat Howard has written a sequel that asks how you have a happily ever in a world that doesn’t want it, where the cost of that happiness may be too much to bear.

My Review

I absolutely LOVED the first book in this series when it came out several years ago. Since then I’ve been scouring lists for more from Kat Howard. This sequel was a delight to find, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The world building here is brilliant – detailed and descriptive and darkly original. The writing is engaging and the characters are magnificent. They are complex and flawed and wholly human in a way that is so compelling. Pair those things with a plot line that dances between redemption and revenge and the result is a marvelous tale that I found engaging from the opening salvo.

I definitely recommend reading the first book (An Unkindness of Magicians) before this one – and if you last read that one a while ago, reread it. This is definitely a continuation of the story and while there are some reminders of what happened previously, you will want to have all that detail fresh in your mind when reading this one to maximize the impact.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my obligation-free review copy.

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