** spoiler alert ** Read for the Fantasy requirement of my Popular Materials class. Considering how much young adult and middle-grade fantasy I've read, it's weird to think how little . . . I don't want to say "adult fantasy," because that sounds dirty . . . regular fantasy? . . . I've read. I think there are some pretty big differences, too. Very often, I've found my beloved YA and MG fantasy novels to revolve around a coming-of-age and/or first-love plotline, like many other YA and MG novels, only set in a fantasy world. (I like to think of this as "dragon-flavored.") I chose this book because, while the jacket copy made it sound like a pretty typical, and thus representative, work of epic fantasy plot-wise (and pretty swashbuckling), it has unusual and appealing cover art, is shorter than I think of fantasy novels as typically being, and is a stand-alone volume.

In some ways, I'm reminded of Eragon. The Tower of Shadows was published in 2006, and the jacket copy emphasizes the author's youth - a college student when the book came out, he began writing it in high school. As with Eragon, I'm afraid this is all too believable.

(I'm not entirely sure what going on about the author's age is supposed to accomplish, anyway. Yes, if the book was awesome, I'd be extra impressed because the author's so young, but as it is, my thought is, "It's impressive for being written by a high school student." When you're getting a book published, I think you should be held to a standard of excellence, not a standard of excellence for your age. If you write a book that's great for a high schooler, but mediocre overall, then I think publishers should hold off on snapping you up until you can write a book that's great, period. After all, what's the rush?)

Right! So, per my usual pattern, I'll start with what I like. There's some beautiful and evocative description ("bruised sky" is one I like, off the top of my head). I also like the way the evil and corruption of the land takes the form of creeping red vines. Also, if you're looking for a cinematic read, this definitely has that quality.

Indeed (launching seamlessly into criticism), one of my big issues with the book is a lack of grounded point of view in the writing, which I suspect comes from the story being written as if someone were transcribing a movie (including voiced-over thoughts and internal conflicts), rather than actually following characters. Eragon did this, too. It may be that this is actually a commoner writing technique than I realize - a sort of third-person-sometimes-distant-and-periodically-omniscient.



The story spends most of its time following one of four characters:

1. Seventeen-year-old Corin, an innocent and sheltered orphan who assists in his kindly uncle's bakery but whose blood, unfortunately, is an evil MacGuffin (we pretty much know his history from the prologue, so this isn't a big reveal)

2. World-weary ex-adventurer Wren, who just cares about raising his daughter - the only family he has left - right, but can't bring himself to talk to her about the past that's about to drag them both into crazy danger

3. Sixteen-year-old Kayla, Wren's daughter, who wants adventure, from which Daddy Dearest insists on protecting her

4. Seventeen-year-old Adriel, a wizard's apprentice (and another orphan), who's not that good at magic and decidedly does not want adventure, but no one cares what Adriel wants

(It's worth noting that, among these four, we have a total of six entirely separate murdered parents. Rough world these people live in.)


We get very occasional omniscient glimpses of what's in some other character's head, or a note about some local legend or someone's history that our current point of view character has no business knowing. For the most part, though, the story follows one of these four, giving us her/his thoughts as well as keeping the camera pretty well focused on her/him.

The language and tone of the story doesn't change in any way I can perceive with POV changes, nor does it seem to reflect the way any of these four would likely speak or think. The language is . . . lavish. By this I mean that the author has bought his adjectives in bulk. Sometimes, he uses them in nice phrases, like the aforementioned "bruised sky." At other times, we get multiple mentions of "nether light" (seems to be used for any light caused by . . . evil things), and a sentence saying that the moon casts "lunar light." After calling it "the moon". As in, "the moon cast its lunar light". Most of the actual sentence construction is pretty nice, so at least there's that.

There's also some showing-not-telling - I had to laugh when, during one of Adriel's POV sections, he's been scolding his master's pet fox, and the fox is all being annoying, and the book says Adriel "criticized the fox again for good measure." It doesn't tell us what he actually says, or even say something a little less formal and weird, like that he "grumbled at the fox" or "swore at the fox." Can't you just see this apprentice, our current POV character, thinking, "Let me just criticize that fox again for good measure"?

This leads into a related issue, and one of my biggest problems with the book: in the dialogue, of which there's a lot, every character speaks exactly the same way. Farmers, knights, bandits, wizards, and pirates; young and old; hailing from different places (though the whole country is pretty small) . . . they all speak in eloquent and grammatically correct sentences that read much like the writing outside the quotation marks. I love dialogue, so this really bums me out. The only variation I can think of occurs when Sir Lancet is dying (*pout*), when he has the presence of mind to throw in a lot of ellipses out of respect for his acute case of punctured torso.

Aside from my problems with the voice (and some sadness about a couple of characters who died, and the small factual error of a fox baring its teeth, which foxes are unique among canines in not being able to do - it's quite possible, though, that this one is magical), I'd have to say my other big problem is the lack of female characters being awesome. Kayla's not a bad character, but she's basically useless, doing nothing but be protected by Wren (to be fair, this is largely true of Corin, too) and periodically be the target of gross lusty bad men (not true of Corin, as far as we know). It's pretty realistic for Kayla to be useless, given her sheltered life - indeed, I wonder a bit why she's able to ride a horse on her own. Still, let's have a run-through of named female characters in this book:
- Kayla
- Lori (Kayla's mom, murdered between the prologue and Chapter One)
- Amber and Marian, old wizards who toss out some semi-useful advice when Kayla and Wren basically trip over their wizardly haunts
- Jezebel (pirate torturer, killed)
Aaand . . . is that it? I think that might actually be it. Seriously. Unless you count the pet fox, who's female. And who is also killed.




Here's your (not terribly) quick plot summary:

When Corin was a baby, his village was attacked by crazy evil people who were trying to summon a demon. Wren and his wife happened to be in the neighborhood, and they and a wizard named Dale saw Corin's parents get murdered by aforementioned crazy peeps. They managed to rescue baby Corin and get the hell out of Dodge. Unfortunately, they failed to rescue Corin's older brother Cade, who was left behind, assumed dead.

Fast-forward to now: Cade's living in the Tower of Shadows, a nasty bad blighted place, having completed his eeevil wizard apprenticeship by killing his master. He's on a mission to . . . summon the demon the crazy peeps were trying to summon. So he can kill it. To avenge his parents. And the only way he can summon the demon is to spill the blood of a sibling (of his, presumably, not just any sibling, e.g. me) with a special dagger. So, he sends assassins out to get the dagger and his brother, and while they're at it kill whatever people seem like they might be a threat to the plan, e.g. Wren and Dale.

Corin, meanwhile, lives a normal life in a little village, working for his uncle and chilling with best friend Dusty. Notices the world seems to be suffering from some blight and harbingers of evil darkness. Feels uneasy. Also, he has a limp, due to babyhood injury at the hands of crazy would-be demon-summoners.

Kayla wants adventure, and also friends, and also to draw pictures. Daddy Wren wants her to study and not have or do any of those other things. They communicate poorly. Then Kayla witnesses some of Cade's assassins doing their murdery thing, and Dale summons Wren to repay an old debt. (Apparently, years ago, Dale helped to protect Kayla's mother from . . . something bad. When she managed to get herself murdered anyway, by unspecified persons or forces, Dale helped Wren avenge her. Amazingly, this is never elaborated on. A little strange, but it does lend the story some of that "there's more than what's on the page" feel.) Dale wants Wren to protect Corin, in order that Cade not summon a demon he can't possibly defeat and cause darkness to overrun the world. Wren resents this mightily.

Meanwhile, Dale's apprentice Adriel can't catch a break. Just in general. Dale tells him he's graduated early from apprenticeship and is a full-blown wizard, despite the fact that the one spell we've seen him attempt ended with a crab clinging to his ear. Dale then sends him packing - in the middle of a thunderstorm, no less - to find and protect Corin, whom he is to easily identify because he is blond and has a limp.

Wren and Kayla set off to meet up with Dale for further instructions. Wren cuts Kayla's hair in an attempt to disguise her as a boy, which seems to fool about fifteen percent of the people who see her. Kayla is spirited but utterly useless in any practical sense, while Wren does a good round of head-cracking every time someone looks at her funny.

Everyone wrangles with assassins, except for Adriel, because assassins don't care about Adriel. (I care about you, Adriel! Even if you apparently talk and think in the exact same terms everyone else does!)

Eventually, the party meets up and flees the two master assassins together. They've got Dusty in tow, and are also joined by the strangely likable and totally random Sir Lancet Rhymewind. Sir Lancet was hunting a dragon, but dumps that quest to join our heroes. Sadly, I wouldn't get too attached to either of these two. (Especially tragic because Dusty provides basically all of the comic relief. Which isn't to say he has a unique voice, but only that he's the one who gets to say the funny things in the same voice in which they all speak.)

Our heroes run to a pirate town, where they encounter the assassins, and also (surprise!) pirates, who have their own beef with Wren, insomuch as they killed Wren's father, which apparently causes them to hate Wren and want to kill him, too. Anyway, it's here that we say goodbye to Dusty and Sir Lancet, and also to the assassins, who are killed by (can you guess?) Wren. Corin decides to run off (er, ride off, as he's not so much with the running, given the limp) and find his brother in hopes of convincing him not to be evil. Our heroes haste after him. On their way, they kill the dragon Sir Lancet was after.

Big confrontation at the Tower of Shadows. Cade alternates between being reasonable - he has no intention of killing Corin, just needs a drop of his blood for the spell's mechanics to work - and idly torturing the captured Dale. (Corin's backup appears just in time to watch Dale die. Very dismaying for poor Adriel, who was raised by Dale after his own parents were murdered.) In the end, Cade stabs Corin, and the demon shows up, but all of our heroes are protected by what seems to be a combination of their medallions (symbols of their faith in the three gods) and the Power of Goodness and Love. Cade is not. The demon snatches him and goes back to demonland.

Corin is miraculously healed, including his limp! (Because we can't have a hero with a physical disability, can we?) We have a charming few closing paragraphs wherein, perhaps due to relief at saving the world and/or the effects of shock, our heroes seem to be recovering remarkably well from the recent deaths of lots of people they care about (only Kayla didn't really lose anyone super-important - "thanks, Dad, for not letting me have friends!"), and are optimistic for the future.



A couple of things the book surprised me by not doing (mostly pleasant surprises):

1. No romance plotline. Man, I was so sure he'd do this! Kayla's description makes it clear she's pretty, and she's so useless that I was sure she'd wind up being someone's designated romantic interest. Kind of refreshing that it doesn't happen.

2. No explanation of Lori's death or the murders of Adriel's parents. I'll admit, I was curious about what happened to Lori, but leaving it this way kind of gives the sense that it's too painful for Wren to even think about. As for Adriel's parents, it is, again, refreshing, that they don't turn out to be tied into the plot somehow.



So, that's pretty much it. Totally random thing I wonder about: when they get to that inn in the pirate town, why does Sir Lancet ask whether it's where Wren's father was killed? I'm pretty sure Wren never said anything about that to anyone . . . Perhaps Sir Lancet is just that awesome.