This book is being sent to the winner of the "Mythological Sweepstakes"

Book Details from Wikipedia:

Dr. Maya Witherspoon is a young doctor who has just emigrated to England, and intends to practice medicine in London. She had lived most of the first twenty-five years of her life in her native India. The daughter of a British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste, Maya was trained in medicine by her father and graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine when she was twenty-two.
As well as being a doctor, Maya also had a magical heritage. Her mother was a powerful sorceress; a former priestess of the Indian gods. Despite her repeated requests for training, her mother refused, saying only that Maya’s magic was of her father’s blood. However, she never had the chance to explain this enigmatic statement fully, for she was stricken by cholera, and died. Maya suspected that something far more sinister than the disease had killed her mother, and her suspicions were confirmed by her father’s death shortly thereafter. He had been killed by the bite of a krait, a tiny venomous snake, and in the last hours of her mother’s life, Surya had repeatedly warned Maya to beware ‘the serpent’s shadow’. With the loss of her father, Maya knew she must flee the land of her birth or face the same fate as her parents.
In her self-imposed exile in London, Maya lives with only the most loyal of her family’s servants, as well as seven pets that originally belonged to her mother and appear to be occasional avatars of Hindu deities. In her new home she practices medicine for concert hall staff and at a charity hospital, and fights the prejudices held by those in power against her gender and race and continues to hide from the mysterious and sinister power that murdered her parents. Eventually, with the help of a local Water Master Peter Scott, Maya discovers and trains her own Earth magic, and manages to defeat the malign force that seeks to destroy her.

Thank you very much KarenBC! This book arrived in Delphi, Greece today!
It looks very interesting, one more author/book I discover through BookCrossing...
Isn't this community wonderful? : )

First time hearing of this author and while The Serpent's Shadow wasn't that bad, I'm not enthused about it. Is Mercedes Lackey one of the most clumsy authors I've read, or what???

On my opinion the prose was rather flat, the characters were too shallow, stereotypical and two-dimentional, the "magic-world" building was rather crude while the plot was a bit all over the place, featuring many holes, many cliche and a lot of predictable twists. Not much happened on the book to keep my interest, other than the -predictable- final "combat" that was weird and not as well-written as one would think...

In general I felt that this novel lacks some spirit and depth. Maybe this book is more appropriate for teenagers or people with less reading under their belts or maybe I'm hard to please, but I believe that there was potential here for something better. A more skillful author would produce a much more engaging read using the central ideas of this book...

All that said, I hope people won't get the impression this was that bad! This story was an easy and entertaining read to pass the time. Although I'll not actively seek for another book from this author, I have no objection to read one if I happen to stumble upon it sometime...

Thanks once again KarenBC.
Now let's see what future readers will make out of this book...

The Serpent's Shadow will now visit yet an other continent, travelling to meet the winner or decoy of the last round of Book and Bookmark Sweepstakes!

I send along an other book for variety : )

Happy Reading!

waiting for me when i got home from my travels

thankyou :) so much for your interesting parcel of (2) books and lots of bookmarks
and congratulations on your win for this sweepstakes

over the years i have sent more than one mercedes lackey title for wishes and i am yet to read one! here is my chance...

thanks again
happy reading

;)