Luck in the Shadows by Lynn Flewelling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I had already read the Tamir triad/trilogy by Lynn and liked it, so I thought I’d start in on this one since I found it at my awesome library! I didn’t realize that this was set in the same "universe" except hundreds of years later (I think), so I was pleasantly surprised. And apparently, this one was written first even though it is chronologically later. So I found that a bit serendipitous. However, I don’t think that you need to read any other book before starting in on either series. They seem to be fairly well self-contained.
Setting: This is a medieval quest-type book, with some of the standard tropes of journeying from place to place and having a newcomer experience different parts of the world. There was some nice homage to Tolkien and Jordan in the setting and such, which was fun. I thought Lynn did well with depicting locations and telling what the characters saw – I didn’t feel confused or lost at all.
Plot: In some ways this is a boy’s coming of age story. But it is also a mystery, where they are trying to discover who is after them and who is responsible for certain "bad" deeds. There are lots of open plot lines to take us into the next book (I kind of wish it would have had even more of a resolution in this one though).
Conflict: All sorts of conflicts are going on here, from inter-personal to national. I was keep guessing through most of the book on many of the conflicts (and am still guessing on some). There are some moments where the author tries to create suspense when in the viewpoint of a character "in the know" that fell a bit flat for me because it felt like the facts were being hidden (the character knew but we don’t get details).
Character: This is one of the author’s strengths, I believe. I really liked the characters. Many of them felt real to me and acted real – even the psychotic ones.
Text: I could tell this was some of Lynn’s earlier work because the writing wasn’t quite as good as before, however it still held up rather nicely. There were some POV errors and confusion by switching POV within chapters and between paragraphs, but these were few and far between.
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