Shadowfall by James Clemens

Shadowfall is a mixed bag of an epic fantasy novel that doesn’t quite live up to the hype bestowed upon it by some of the impressive blurbs on the front and back cover of the novel. The basic concept of the story is that gods have settled over the lands of Myrillia. When one of these gods is killed, fallen knight Tylar de Noche is thrust into the middle of it, when the dying god inserts her essence into Tylar. Hunted down, he is determined to find out just what is going on. Meanwhile, an insurgent group of knights called The Fiery Cross are part of an overarching conspiracy working against Tylar.



Although there was some entertainment value in reading the novel, it was heavily flawed. For one thing, the whole part of having to harvest the gods’ bodily fluids was just silly. Right from the jump, it took me out of the novel, and I had a hard time taking it seriously. The novel bent over backwards to make a big deal of inserting twists and big reveals, but they telegraphed them from a mile away, and when the reveal finally happened, it wasn’t very surprising or pack much punch.



The writing itself was fairly mediocre. There was nothing technically wrong, but it also didn’t captivate me. There were some interesting plot points and some intrigue in the novel, but the problem was every time my interest rose, something brought me right out of it. The ending was climactic but I don’t find myself wanting to dive into the next book in the series.