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Jan 21, 2009

Shannon rated it:

Elianne was an orphaned child of the fiefs, scraping out a living in the fiefdom of Nightshade with an older boy, Severn, and two other little girls. Then one day strange markings appeared on her arms and legs, and the killings began. Thirty-eight children are found murdered with markings like hers carved into their skin - and she knew all of them - until they suddenly stopped the same day she ran away from the fiefs, from Severn, from the horror of what she'd seen.

Now, seven years l More...

13 comments like (19 people liked it)

Apr 13, 2009

Angie rated it:

And today we have the first in yet another series I had heard much good about but avoided picking up for a variety of no good reasons. I think my reluctance stemmed somewhat from an uncertainty as to just what kind of series Michelle Sagara's Cast series was. I think at first I had the impression it was a paranormal romance, possibly an urban fantasy (the covers influenced me this way). A few chapters in I was surprised to find CAST IN SHADOW much more a mix of dark and high fantasy, peopled wit More...

4 comments like (6 people liked it)

Aug 02, 2011

Janice (Janicu) rated it:

This is the first book in this series by Michelle Sagara (aka Michelle West or Michelle Sagara West). Kaylin is a Hawk - one of the arms of the law in her world. She has an unusual ability for healing and also unusual tattoos on her arms which suddenly appeared on her when she was a child. No one can explain them. She is an orphan from the outer city (a very poor and dangerous area). When she was young she escaped this place by petitioning to be a Hawk. There is a reason she left, a really distu More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2008

Debbie rated it:

The story was interesting enough but was often confusing. I didn't like that several times something would happen and, at the end of the scene, you wonder why the author just wasted your time with that. Much, much later you realize what she was trying to establish with the scene, but I really would have liked it if the author had made the point of the scene clearer at the time it occurred.

Also, the author attempts to create a mystery (as if there wasn't enough) by withholding from t More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 27, 2011

Arren rated it:

Seven years ago Kaylin Neya left Nightshade, the home of criminals, prostitutes and the poor, when children with strange patterns on their were being murdered. The same patterns that had appeared on her skin.

Seven years has passed, and Kaylin is now a Hawk in Elantra; she can read, write, and fight, and as a Hawk, polices her new home. But when children start dying again, with the same strange patterns on their skin, she is ordered back to Nightshade to investigate the murders and fa More...

1 comment like

Sep 21, 2011

Jenn rated it:

I wonder how many "I can't tell you that" I'd find if I began to count. I gave up reading so close to the end but it was an "I can't tell you that" moment that made me roll my eyes. Seriously. Every time I read that it felt like the author didn't know what the secrets were so she said "I can't tell you that" to us. That's not how you add a little mystery to a story. No one really explained the markings on her arm other than saying "I can't tell you that." More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Sep 16, 2011

Roxanne rated it:

2.5 Stars

I feel kinda bad for giving this book a bad rating. It wasn't a bad book, the characters were very likable and it was a very fascinating story the author had created.

But...I spent most of the book being confused. The reason for this is basically an information overload. WAY too much history was mentioned, and not just with one race we get told about it's ALL the races. There's humans, Barrani, Leontine and dragons. THEN there is levels of rank and a whole bunch of p More...

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Aug 04, 2011

Amanda rated it:

Young Kaylin left her home to find protection in the ranks of the Hawks, a type of peacekeeping, almost police-like force in Elantra. Sadly, she finds that she's not very good at magic, generally fails classes and is cursed with a strange gift that ties her to the past she tried to run away from. When the Elantran authorities investigate Kaylin further, her past returns and Kaylin is forced to unravel the mystery behind her strange past.

Cast in Shadow sounds like a typical high fantasy More...

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Jan 18, 2011

Emily rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

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Jan 12, 2011

Ithlilian rated it:

I'm really torn here. I wanted to love this book, and there is so much about it that is interesting, but I feel so underwhelmed after finishing it. I loved the different races and types of creatures and their mannerisms, but I felt that they were not really explained very well. From the opening pages certain people are labeled as a specific race, yet we don't know much about the races. Sure the Leonites resemble lions, but that's all I got. I felt from very early on that I was missing something. More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jan 10, 2011

Jennifer marked it as to-read

98 pages in, I was wondering how I had convinced myself to read as far as I did. At least 3 times during the course of reading this, I checked to make sure that this was the first book in the series. Something just felt really incomplete about it, as if I were starting the story in the middle and didn't have all the information I needed for everything to make sense.

If I were an editor, I would have required the author to have a prologue which shows us what happened to Kaylin 7 years a More...

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Nov 12, 2010

Anita rated it:

This book has me re-examining my prejudices against traditional fantasy writing. I'm an urban/contemporary fantasy fan through and through. I found reading the Hobbit painful and won't touch the Lord of the Rings, even for bribes. I generally dislike hero-quest stories with character names that are unpronounceable and a lack of modern dialect. Anything that hints at historical fiction annoys me. And I've generally attributed all of these traits to traditional fantasy writing. This book turned my More...

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May 09, 2010

Whitney rated it:

I've read most everything Michelle Sagara West has written. I read the first five of her Elantran Chronicles in a week. Her writing is excellent, her characterization the same. She brings to life the intimate tangle of human relationships with convincing ease. She drops hints and develops political intrigue with the finesse of a master.

The Elantran Chronicles, "Cast in Shadow" is the first installment in the series, is an example of urban fantasy. WAIT. Before you roll you More...

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Apr 22, 2010

Mei-Lu rated it:

This book is ... so much more than I was expecting. I think I thought it was going to be something light and forgettable. A good yarn. An episode of a TV show I like, but don't need to watch. I was wrong.

You know the adage, "don't judge a book by its cover". Well, that so completely and utterly applies here. Books with covers like these are very much like TV shows and Rodney Dangerfield - they don't get much respect (there's a reason why HBO's slogan is "it's not More...

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Jan 05, 2010

Danielle rated it:

Book Review: ‘Cast in Shadow’ by Michelle Sagara
Luna, 2005
ISBN: 0-373-8-254-4
507 pages

It’s usually easiest to review the first in a series of books. So let me tell readers first off that ‘Cast in Shadow’ is the first a series which already has, so far as I know, at least three books (‘Cast in Courtlight’ being the next). They’re all fat books. You’ll get your $6.99 worth of reading in these books.
Kaylin is a member of the paramilitary police force Hawks who More...

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Sep 21, 2009

Clarice rated it:

Ok. So... I took this out of the library once because I wanted something cheesetacular and then promptly failed to actually read it. This time I took it out of the library and actually read it! Woo! I think part of my problem with this book was the cover. WHY do female urban fantasy authors have the cheapest looking covers? I mean, I guess this is ok, but it screams Romance genre to me. And that is not what this book is! I guess I'm just a cover snob.

Aaaanyway, this was not bad! I ki More...

1 comment like

May 18, 2009

Jason rated it:

When reading a book series, it can b frustrating. Y u ask? IT is because the author usually is more concerned with setting up yr interest in the next book as opposed 2 truly writing the best story they can possibily tell; which, despite most authors failure 2 do so, includes a engrossingly satifying ending after considering the high investment of time (and lack of sleep) most readers deviate 2 actually read their novel. As a reader, I consider it a demand that hen I finsh a story that I feel con More...

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Jan 25, 2011

Laylah rated it:

well, that wasn't too bad. Honestly, I never really warmed up to Kaylin, though she got better than she'd seemed at the beginning. I didn't feel super attached to anyone, and I think about the only relationship I wanted to see more of was between two of the minor characters who appeared to have some kind of sinister backstory together.

...Mostly, what bothered me was the continuing sense that Kaylin was barely more than a child, and while she had Great Mysterious Power she also had next More...

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Sep 28, 2010

Kalynn rated it:

It took about a hundred pages for me to get into this book. For the first fifth of the novel I was lost and in world building overload. Once I got past that point, however, I read it in a white hot fury. I'm going to the library tomorrow to get the next one, despite the hundred or so unread books already hanging out in my house.

I think the book was so good, because the world is traditional enough to be a recognizable fantasy world and original enough to feel fresh. The characters More...

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Dec 26, 2008

Theresa rated it:

This novel suffered from a massive case of too much world building. The main character, Kaylin Neya, is a human who lives in the city of Elantra along five other races. From what the author wrote and then what I could find online (since what the author wrote was confusing), Kaylin lives alongside five different races: the Barrani (immortals), the Dragons (also immortals, who can appear human), the Tha'alani (mortals who can discern the truth by touching you with the stalks growing out of their More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 19, 2010

Meredith rated it:

I thought this book started with a lot of promise. The premise of the plot is an interesting one, and I was curious to see how it would end. I also found the characters engaging and empathetic. The different races in the book are interesting, and I wish there had been more about them (but then, I really like a wealth of world-building details).

However, the book suffers from two major issues (that I could see): one was that the story felt disjointed, so it was not always complete More...

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Oct 06, 2011

Rachel rated it:

Sentence fragments. Abundant. Qualifying and redundant. Slightly repetetive. In the same sense that Roseanne Barr was slightly mouthy.

I have read this once before and wasn't enchanted. I reread it because my mother enjoyed it, and I thought I'd give it another chance. Apparently, I'm a glutton for punishment.

There are a few things I can tell you about the main character with total confidence: she is always late, she failed every non-practical class in her education, did More...

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Jun 26, 2009

mangoesnkiwis rated it:

I can't quite figure out why I didn't like this book. Maybe it's just me, but the writing is very vague. I never get a feel of what kind of city the story is taking place or of what the characters look like.

I get that the author is trying really hard for us to believe that everyone loves the main character Kaylin, but she just sounds like she's too incompetent to be a Hawk. She apparently failed all the classes she had to take to become a Hawk. Which makes me wonder what kind o More...

1 comment like (3 people liked it)

Nov 28, 2011

Kat rated it:

I just finished rereading all the books in the series (currently at 7) thanks to an amazon gift card. Thanks Lexie!

I really enjoy this series. It has many of the aspects of the current genre of paranormal romance - i.e. a heroine who has special magic powers, a complicated personal life, etc, but there are several differences that make it much more enjoyable to me.

Number one, as is probably obvious, this is set in a fantasy world vs. a paranormal version of our own. Ther More...

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Dec 11, 2011

Chrysoula rated it:

This is definitely three-stars in Goodreads-system: I liked it. Some parts I really liked, some parts I didn't like at all. It balanced out into a net positive.

I loved the worldbuilding-- the many species all living together, the implied histories and so on. I liked getting to see multiple characters of each of the major races, so that no one of them felt like the I really want to read more about the world. And I found Kaylin, the protagonist, an interesting character.

I wasn' More...

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Nov 04, 2011

Chernyse rated it:

Wow, I have to say I really did like this book. At first I was a bit skeptical, because yes, I did judge the book by its cover. In the beginning, it was a little confusing because of the new names like Aerian, Leontine, and Barrani. What I liked about it though, was that Sagara didn't just dump a whole heap of history and background on the newly introduced races and characters, but weaved it nicely into each chapter. Some readers, might get annoyed trying to figure out what Aerians and all those More...

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Oct 04, 2011

Chris rated it:

This is a really wonderful first book to this series. Great world building, good intrigue, excellent characters, fun and interesting dialogue, and lots of action.
The Chronicles of Elantra Series
The first book, Cast in Shadow (The Chronicles of Elantra, Book 1), was excellent. You're sucked into the world of Kaylin, as she is forced to confront her past, and the people from it, while working on a murder case. And being forced to deal with foreign emotions, after catching the attentio More...

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Jan 13, 2010

Victoria rated it:

I really enjoyed this book! At first, the dry narration - dry in humour, not in interest - was a bit off-putting. I think that this would not have been in the case if the book was written in first-person, rather than third, but as I became more accustomed to her style, I really loved it! And it's always so exciting to start a new series! In some ways, this book reminded me of what I remember from reading Maggie Furey's Aurian a long time ago, and more recently, Maria V. Snyder's books. Either wa More...

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Jul 05, 2010

jD rated it:

I read this last fall and forgot to add it to my books at that time because it really did not inspire me to sit down and write. I am only doing so now because I almost checked it out at the library this weekend. The plot was well conceived in the authors mind but some of it did not translate. I just did not care about the world or any of the characters. Everyone was too brash. Granted, they lived in a hard world but this book did not contain one character that softened a scene. Speaking of More...

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Mar 07, 2011

Flitterkit rated it:

Totally hooked me from the start which is what I was afraid of. I had been delaying reading this one due to it being 500 pgs and I haven't had the free time to loose a full day to a book recently. Well it had to go back to the library so I dug in anyway. Oh so wonderful, why are there pesky things like "sleep" and "work" that get in the way of reading? WHY? Wonderful characters and story. I read the short story in Harvest Moon that preceded this story by a bit, but you don't More...

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