“The Shadow of What Was Lost” by James Islington

I’m always on the lookout for a good classic fantasy series. While I’m glad that so many books these days are not following the “hero’s journey of a secretly powerful young farmboy as the Dark One rises in a vaguely medieval world” trope, that trope is what got me into fantasy and it’s still my first love. It’s getting harder to write good books with that storyline, though – they end up being too clichéd, or too dark, or the characters are too wooden. When I read that The Shadow of What Was Lost was inspired by the Wheel of Time and Brandon Sanderson’s work (both of which I turn to for comfort reading), I was pretty excited to read it.

The Shadow of What Was Lost follows a group of three friends at a school for the Gifted (magic users) – Davian, Wirr, and Asha. Tragedy strikes and the friends become separated – Davian and Wirr on their way north on a quest they barely understand, and Asha taken to the royal capital determined to find out the truth of what happened. And the Boundary keeping out an ancient evil sorcerer and his hordes of evil creatures is starting to fail, and it doesn’t seem like it’s happening naturally.

I really enjoyed reading this book. It has an detailed world, interesting complementary magic (kind of like Robin Hobb’s Skill and Wit), and I cared about the characters. It isn’t entirely original (the Wheel of Time inspirations are occasionally pretty obvious), but the author puts his own spin on things and there were quite a few surprises as well. I liked that even though there were a few obvious Evil elements, most of the characters ended up having realistic motivations and things that seemed pretty black and white when they were introduced ended up have more depth to them. The author also doesn’t drag plot points on for very long – even if there are a few things that the reader learns that the characters don’t know yet, the characters find out within a few chapters (unlike the Wheel of Time; it’s excruciating when characters make decisions based on information we know to be incorrect as of a few books ago.)

I can’t wait to read book 2, An Echo of Things to Come, which should be released next year. I’m a little disappointed that the series is only planned to be a trilogy, I feel like the world and the characters are interesting enough to sustain a few more books.

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