While this is touted as the first book in the Elemental Masters series, the real first book in this series is the 'Fire Rose', so if you are going to read this book, you definitely want to check out the other one. You can read that book before or after this one, it doesn't matter as the two are not too closely tied together.

This is overall an entertaining book. It brings magic into this world in a subtle way, almost like Harry Potter except magic works differently in the Elemental Masters univer More...

Goddammit. If I end up reading this entire freaking series just because of the Wimsey homage character, I swear I will....not be surprised.

Okay, so, there's an egregious amount of dialect, and the handling of Hinduism is maaaaaaaaybe a step and a half above Temple of Doom, and the author is clearly v. proud of how she's handling issues of race in Edwardian England with a heroine whose mother was Indian, and while you're totally aware she's tanking it most of the time, you don't realize how much More...

"Maya Witherspoon had lived most of the first twenty-five years of her life in her native India. As the daughter of a prominent British physician and a Brahmin woman of the highest caste, she had known only luxury. Trained by her father in the medical arts since she was old enough to read, she graduated from the University of Delhi as a Doctor of Medicine by the age of twenty-two. Welcomed into her father's lucrative practice, she treated many of the wives and daughters of the British military p

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After I enjoyed the Fire Rose, I had a feeling that continuing the series was not going to work out well for me. Just reading the blurbs for this one did nothing for me. But I thought, since I hadn't enjoyed Mercedes Lackey books as much as I expected to in any of her previous works, that perhaps something about this series would connect with me more. I love a good fairy tale retelling. So I picked this up with some trepidation. Sure enough, this one moved slowly, but somehow I still didn't feel More...

For entertainment and clever rendering of a fairy tale, The Serpent's Shadow deserves four stars. The writing is not profound or life changing, but an excellent means for escape.

I began this book with reluctance, feeling a little tired of fairy tale retellings. I know it's shocking, but even I can have too much of a good thing. However, in spite of my overdose, I was still impressed with Lackey's presentation of Snow White. Her representation was all I most appreciate in a good retelling. The st More...

Mercedes Lackey was at her best with The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy because of the realness that Vanyel's ambivalence about his life gave the series. There wasn't just an existence of good guys and bad guys, and the guys that did things that were bad but repented in the end; but, since then, this shallowness has become fairly typical of Lackey's work.

The main character, Maya Witherspoon, is a horrible person. She's shallow, thinks rude and ugly things about Amelia (the girl who is her "friend") an More...

This was more of a 2 1/2, I liked some of it (and I really wanted to like this one) but it never quite worked for me. I felt like the suffragette bits were tacked on and didn't really do anything for the story, likewise her profession as a doctor felt like it could have been handled in a way that was more compelling. Actually most of the story feels like that, lots of potential it never manages to live up to. It's a neat concept and I love historical fantasy and fairy tale re-tellings so this sh More...

When both of her parents die, leaving Maya alone and outcast as a female, half-breed physician in India, she flees the unseen enemy behind their suspicious deaths and buries herself in the heart of London. The daughter of a British physician and an Indian sorceress, Maya is an accomplished healer and surgeon in her own right, combining her academic training with her innate magical skills. She remains relatively naive in her magical talents, however, for her mother refused to train her, saying cr More...

Fantasy seems almost entirely split between contemporary Urban Fantasy like Hamilton or the author's own Diana Tregarde novels or High Fantasy in a pseudo-medieval setting such as Tolkien or the author's own Valdemar books. So it was refreshing to read a fantasy set in Edwardian times, and a lot of the pleasure of this novel was how well it evoked that historical milieu.

You don't often see heroines that hail from India either, and Maya, half-English and half-Indian, is a very appealing heroine, More...

The Serpent's Shadow is the second book is Mercedes Lackey's Elemental Masters series, and focuses on Maya Witherspoon, the daughter of an English father and Indian mother who must flee her beloved India for London when both her parents are killed by a mysterious and magical enemy.

The Plot

Unlike The Fire Rose, which clearly borrowed from "Beauty and the Beast", the fairy tale elements of The Serpent's Shadow nonexistent until the very end, when they are introduced with ham-handed obviousness. Ot More...

This was a fun book although it took me a little while to get into it. It is very fantasy oriented which is generally a genre I don't often read. That being said, I did enjoy the magical elements once I got involved in it. It is based very loosely on Snow White and the Seven Dwarves...very loosely. Overall I liked it and it is a good book for an easy, light read, but I didn't love it.

It turns out the end of this book is confusingly not really explained and I don't really know why what happened happened.

That said, it's still a wonderful old-fashioned elemental fantasy with a good love story, great side characters, heavily explored historical context (in the best way), a diverse cast, and roots in a fairy tale (I so didn't even notice this was a fairy tale - I'm not saying which one - until the second or third time I read it. But once you know, it's so obvious. How cool and su More...

This was an enjoyable lighter read. It is a Victorian (or really Edwardian-era) fantasy with a dash of mild romance. It's the first book in the Elemental Masters series and the story is a very loose take on the Snow White fairy tale.

I always enjoy books with magic systems that are based on the elements, so I liked the fact that in this series, there are masters of Fire, Air, Earth, and Water. The main character is an Earth master, or has the potential to be if she learns how to use her magic to More...

The book was written really well. You get to know the main character Maya through out the book. Their are some holes that would be helpful if they were given more detail like the characters of Peter Scott and his twin Peter Almsley. Also they talk about that the magic of East and West cant mix, but clearly as to why or how they don't never explains itself. I enjoyed the story. Took me a bit to realize it was similar to Snow White, but I felt like it had a new retelling of the same old story whic More...

I picked up the Serpent's Shadow after reading my first Mercedes Lackey book, The Black Swan, which I really liked. And so it happened that I'd harboured high expectations of this book, hoping it would be one step closer to making Mercedes Lackey one of my favourite authors. I wasn't disppointed, yet not thrilled either.

It turned out to be not so good as Black Swan, though very similar to it in its structure and the general human themes it dealt with.
I suppose such is most of Lackey's work in More...

I always enjoy Lackey's "Elemental Masters" books, and this was no exception. Based slightly on "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves," "The Serpent's Shadow" is the story of Maya, an orphaned Indian half-caste woman living in Edwardian London. She has seven pets who are more than they seem, and who help protect her in her work as a physician in the local charity clinics.

Maya is also an untrained, but instinctive, Earth Master -- who is aided and eventually trained by Captain Peter Scott, a retired More...

Why do English magic elementals show as mer-folk and selkies while Indian magic elementals are avatars of the Indian pantheon? Seems the heroine, Maya, should rethink learning the English magics of her dad over those of her mum. Now I find that all the books in this series are rehashed fairy tale. Ho hum...I'd give up the cleverness in order to not know what happens next..apple seller, kiss...yawn. Not sure I am still excited to read through this series. The book stalls in chatty recollections o More...

I loved Maya. She’s strong and confident and knows how to get what she needs. When we first meet her she’s sitting in some high brow Dr’s office gritting her teeth and trying to appear as harmless as she can so she can get the practice license she needs in order to legally make money from her skills as a Dr. But she’s not a doormat, she fights for what she wants, but she also knows when it’s better to back off and come at a problem again from another angle.

However, the romance relationship betw More...

Disappointed. I generally enjoy Mercedes Lackey books and I wanted to like it, just because the main character was an suffragette woman doctor in Edwardian times (view spoiler)[(if I had liked the book, I might have warned future readers that if you are the sort who is anti-contraception, you'd probably find offense in Maya's doctorly duties) (hide spoiler)]. But no, the plot, magic system and villain were generic once they got going (made more predictable once I realized this was a retelling of Snow White). Shame, because I More...

I really enjoyed this book! I wasn't sure at first about it... mainly because Kitty told me she thought I wouldn't like it. But she bought it so I was going to read it! From the beginning it wasn't exactly a slow book, just thorough, but really well written. Lackey has a beautiful writing style. My favorite aspect about this one was all the religion and history that was tied in . . . obviously I guess >.> But there was SO much!!! *Sigh* Just a really good plot, good characters, good backg More...

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to recognize what was going on in this book. I hadn't read that the Elemental Masters series was based on fairy tales, so when I finally worked out the elements of the story that tied into Snow White, I thought I was rather clever.

I loved the romance story, and the world with the elemental spheres of magic.

I was less thrilled with the scene set at the suffragette march - although it did add to the historical fabric of the tale, the involvement of the mai More...

Review originally published at The Bookwyrm's Hoard.

The Serpent's Shadow is the first (or second*) book in Mercedes Lackey's "Elemental Masters" series, and one of the best. It's also one of the cleverest retold fairy tales I've come across.** In this case, the fairy tale is "Snow White", and Lackey draws inspiration from the basic plot while turning many of the traditional elements on their heads: Snow White is not "white" but the daughter of an English doctor and a high-caste Indian woman; the More...

So it was a little hard to get in to but about half way through it was interesting enough that I didn't want to put it down. I did have a bit of a hard time keeping the names of the animals straight. She called Peter Scott just that the whole time, I wish she had been as clear with the animals. ;p

I don't think I'll be seeking out the rest of her books, but if someone handed me one of them I'd read it.

I do have one MAJOR complaint: What happened to DINNER?!? (If you haven't read it, you might w More...

This is my favorite book from Mercedes Lackey's new series, Elemental Masters. Lackey has done a lovely job of creating interesting and reasonably realistic characters, and the world she has created is detailed and well-written. I love the multicultural flavor that this book has, as well as the wide diversity among the characters. Unlike many books which are based in this particular time period, the main characters of this story are all lower or middle class people - we only see the upper classe More...

Some of my favorite fantasy books are from Mercedes Lackey’s Elemental Masters series. The Fire Rose, The Gates of Sleep, The Serpent’s Shadow, Phoenix and Ashes, The Wizard of London, and Reserved for the Cat are the titles so far. I like all of them. I LOVE some of them. They combine alternate history, classic fairy tales, magic, and the setting of early 1900s England (except The Fire Rose, which is set in America). They stand alone quite well, but are set in the same world, and some of the sa More...

This is the third of the Elemental Masters series that I have read and, so far, the only one that hasn't gotten five stars from me. Not to say this wasn't an enjoyable read! I wish the history of Maya, the main character, had been touched on a little more, (view spoiler)[and the whole, man meets girl, man tries to rape girl, man gets killed was done in the last book... (much better) (hide spoiler)] A little information on the gods that were manifesting in their avatars wouldn't have been remiss either.

I have seen a few compl More...

I really enjoyed this book. I liked the fact that for once, Women suffragettes are presented in a very positive light, and that they even get married....to men who respect them of course! I think in many ways I liked this book better than the first of the series. I loved Maya's "pets". I don't know enough about Hindu mythology to know if it is accurate, or if the Hindu Gods do take form in various animals. I will rather regret not having another book with these characters.

The second book in the "Elemental Masters" universe (the first is _The Fire Rose_), Lackey tries to integrate colonial Indian culture and myth into her Victorian London.

I'm not sure how well she succeeds -- it comes off a bit more as having been written in the period in question in its treatment of racial traits. I acknowledge that racism was a fact of life in that era, but it's hard to tell what's "reflecting what the characters would actually think" vs. "editorializing."

I'm still rather fond o More...

Confusing story...couldn't keep the animals clear in my mind. The relationships were dull and her feelings were lifeless and mechanical. Maya should have had more passion...not just for helping the charity cases, but also for womens' rights (something lightly touched on in the beginning). She is supposed to be a modern, "independent" woman, but that concept isn't developed sufficiently here.

Think I'll read a book from someone else next..need to "clear my mind" and come back to Lackey's books la More...