"Shadowmancer takes you into a world of superstition, magic and witchcraft where nothing can be taken for granted, and the ultimate sacrifice might even be life itself."

I really did not like this book, I felt the religious symbolism overtook the story. I hope it finds a better home than mine.

RELEASE NOTES:

caught it

RELEASE NOTES:

Picked up at the meet. Soffitta said it was 'OK', but after she'd left, WistfulDragon slated it! Still put it in my bag, only because I liked the cover and the title!

I wasn't actually sure of the intended age of reader for this book when I started it; it's definitely a children's book. But then so is Harry Potter and what a world of difference between them!!

An immediate annoyance, within the first few pages, was the introduction of the Thulaks. Ho ho, I thought, plagiarised Dementors (HP). (Some would say that the Dementors themselves are plagiarised from Tolkien's Ring Wraiths, but BCer and big Tolkien fan SemioticGhost says they were sufficiently different to be OK.)

I don't know why, but the characters failed to engage me at any point. And megalomaniacs just piss me off so that didn't help either! Enough of a story to keep reading, but that's about it.

I'm looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy now, as I'm told it's far superior to Shadowmancer.

RELEASE NOTES:

Released for the Never Judge a Book by its Cover 2007 Challenge - Week 5 - something metallic on the cover.

This looked like a good, spooky read when I picked it up in Ipswich today. I'm not so sure, now I've read the other journals for it. Still, I'll still give it a chance...

The pretty basic storyline and cartoon baddies were just about bearable, but the holier-than-thou, overwhelmingly pious, Christian message really got my goat. Basically, it was just another badly-researched good vs evil lark, where good=Christianity and evil=everything non-Christian. The poor old pagans get the usual hatchet job, made out to be no better than devil worshippers. The "true" believers win the day with "Riathamus" on their side. It's unclear why they have to call him by such a weird name, when he is so obviously the Christian deity. With all the Biblical references and borrowed creed, I was starting to wonder if this was produced by the Church of England promotional division. But no, it's a Faber and Faber. What is the world coming to?

I'm marking this as "available." Please do not take this as a recommendation.

Oh Dear! Nobody seems to like this book. Smallbluepebble has passed it on to me for the Cambridge Nero OBCZ. Hope to pop it over there sometime this week!