Recent Reading: Shifter and Shadow by Sharon Shinn

This wasn’t all that recent, actually. I read this long novella in draft, earlier this year.. But it’s just come out, so this seems like the time to mention it.

Here’s the Fairwood Press link (paperback). Here’s the Amazon link (ebook). Here’s the description:

Part of the Twelve Houses series, Shifter and Shadow takes place between the end of The Thirteenth House and the beginning of Dark Moon Defender.

What really happened on Dorrin Isle?

Kirra Danalustrous is the daughter of a marlord, a celebrated beauty—and a shapeshifter with magic in her veins. After a disastrous affair with a married man, she has fled to the edge of the kingdom, to a small fishing village that has become a refuge for children dying from the invariably fatal red-horse fever. Yet Kirra has discovered a radical cure. She can transform the patients into animals who can take a medicine that’s poisonous to humans. But so many people in Gillengaria fear and distrust magic. How many parents will allow Kirra to save their children? And if Kirra saves enough of them, will she be able to heal her own broken heart?

Donnal is a peasant’s son who has been Kirra’s protector and companion for years. Although he’s always loved her, he’s always known she was destined to marry some titled lord and take her place in society. After watching her fall in love with another man, he has tried—and failed—to leave her. A shapeshifter himself, he has accompanied her to Dorrin Isle, determined not to take his human form again because he finds it too painful to be around the woman he knows he cannot have.

But Kirra needs him. So do the dying patients. And if he’s going to help any of them, he has to have the shape—and the heart—of a man.

***

Things I hate: I will die without you. You’re my life and my breath. I will follow at your heels forever.

Things Sharon Shinn can make me like even though I normally detest them: I will die without you. You’re my life and my breath. I will follow at your heels forever.

Over the top devotion strikes me as somewhere between pathetic and creepy. I’m like, GET A GRIP. And yet this plot element works for me in this particular story? How does Sharon do that?

I’m not sure. Part of it is the poetry:

It was as if he had blundered through some hidden door to find himself in another setting altogether, staring at vistas he had never even imagined, all soaring heights and limitless horizons and coruscating stars. He was breathing air dusted with crushed diamonds, scented with starlight and wonder.

If you’re going to go over the top, that’s how to do it. Another part of it is, I think, that both Kirra and Donnal are equally stuck, but in different ways. Another part is that this story includes a subplot that emphasizes an aspect of Kirra’s personality that is absolutely crucial and that has nothing to do with Donnal, though it’s Donnal who makes this clear to … uh … to a certain character, perhaps to himself, and certainly to the reader. And I loved this very much. I think for me this element was central, even though Kirra and Donnal finally working out their relationship is the more obvious heart of the story.

Anyway! This is a fine standalone novella, which also happens to fill in a hole in the Twelve Houses series.

Please Feel Free to Share:

The post Recent Reading: Shifter and Shadow by Sharon Shinn appeared first on Rachel Neumeier.