Not a Nightmare by any means, but not a dream either…
I’m so conflicted at what to rate this. Right now I’m sitting on a 3.5 rounded up to 4, and that is only because I finished this book missing what I loved so much about the first one. I wish I could say a book can stand on its own merits, but when you write a series, I really feel like they should be looked at as a whole (because a series implies one story being split into multiple parts). For that reason alone, I’d have to say four stars because ODW was so fucking good.
Part two of “The Shepherd King” duology was easily my most anticipated release of the year; if you too had the pleasure of reading it, you mostly likely felt the same way after that ending. So yeah, I had high expectations here, and they were largely met, but the book isn’t without its faults.
Before I jump into any of that though, I feel like I need to explain that a review for me is largely about how a book makes me feel; I’m not sure if that helps other readers when deciding whether or not to pick something up themselves, but given that the reason I read is to feel, or sometimes to escape feeling altogether, anytime I write a review it’s focused on personal impressions and how I relate to it as opposed to theme, structure, and all that stuff you were forced to write about in school.
So let’s start at the end of “One Dark Window”, shall we? Given the way that book closed, and how it was structured up to that point, it would be reasonable to expect Book 2 to continue Elspeth’s story, and Ravyn’s quest to save her. It certainly does, but the lens of viewership is laser-focused on Ione and Elm to the point that I feel like Elspeth and Ravyn got kind of screwed. Elspeth is figuratively and literally so intertwined with the Nightmare at this point that his story is hers, but I wanted to know more about Elspeth as a person, who she was outside of the Nightmare, and I don’t feel like we really got that here. Granted, the first book is more or less nothing but that, but I feel like as much as we’re made to hone in on Elspeth and Ravyn in book one, we never really get to see a whole lot of them interacting with each other without the veil of the Nightmare cast over the whole relationship.
I was truly hoping we’d see more of that in TTC, but it’s mostly the Ione and Elm show. Don’t get me wrong, I like Elm, and I think Ione’s whole situation brings up some very interesting points about agency, image and a whole host of feminist goodness. I have no problem with shifting focus, but when you leave other stories unfinished it’s frustrating. There is a coda for Ravyn and Elspeth, but it’s paragraphs compared to pages for Ione and Elm, and it’s confusing as a reader to have that sense of still-unfinished business when characters wouldn’t be in the situations they’re in without Elspeth and her relationship with the Nightmare.
This sounds overly critical for having enjoyed the book as much as I did, but ODW carries the weight of excellence for the series from my perspective, and to rate the second book as low as I initially wanted would almost be unfair to the first volume. It would also be unfair to the story as a whole, since that on its own is impressive.
Still, I almost feel as if this book started off as one thing and then become another at some point. TTC very much feels like two books in one, two distinct stories, that intertwined only briefly in this second volume despite being totally enmeshed in the first. And that’s not just because the characters were physically separated for much of the action here. There was a distinct feeling of wrongness here because of it. I was clinging to the the scraps of story we received concerning Ravyn and Elspeth, and at the risk of sounding melodramatic, they unfortunately drifted through my fingers like mist. You wouldn’t be able to convince me that the story of Ione and Elm, while engaging on its own, had a major impact on driving the plot forward. In truth, if you consider the fact that the Nightmare, his relationship with Elspeth, his whole backstory and how it factors into saving Blunder, you really could have cut the Ione/Elm storyline down by 75% and still had more or less the same book. It left me with the feeling that the author made a conscious decision to have more romance in the plot, but being unable to do so with her two main characters because she all but made one disappear at the end of ODW and kept her that way for 90% of this book. The saddest thing is that we ostensibly see this world through Elspeth’s eyes, and I know no more about who she actually is at the end of it all than I did at the beginning. I almost feel like I know less.
It’s very misleading in a way: The blurb on the back of the book talks solely of Elspeth and Ravyn, but we see so little of Elspeth here, and not much more of Ravyn, despite his POV chapters, which are pretty much him interacting not with Elspeth, but with the Nightmare wearing Elspeth’s body. Given the way the first book ends, it’s a shock as a reader to spend most of your time watching Ione and Elm dance around each other. It just doesn’t make sense to me to have the most prominent romantic relationship in the series not even be between the two people that are literally driving the plot forward. It was really disappointing to see Elspeth as much an observer as we are here, whereas in the first book she’s more a co-pilot. Her POV chapters really shouldn’t have even been labeled with her name, since she spends so much of the book lost in the recesses of her own mind. I knew that Ione and Elm were going to receive a more prominent place in this part of the story, but I was shocked to find them to be the focus. I kind of feel duped, and I’m a little salty over it.
The Good:
The Nightmare – He’s like The Muppets Statler and Waldorf in beast form. The banter and his observations were top tier.
The Magic System/The Providence Cards/World-Building in general – One of the best things about this series is how Rachel Gillig took a very dense and detailed magic system and made it not only interesting but palatable. The reveal about The Maiden card was especially cool. I would love to get the full life story of the Nightmare and the creation of the Providence Cards at some point.
Ravyn – No explanation needed. Get you a man that would willingly journey to alternative planes of reality for you.
The Bad:
Short Shrift for Elspeth and Ravyn – To summarize, they are the two most important people in relation to the world that was built and to the driving force of the plot, yet this book seemed to focus more on Elm and Ione flirting with each other, which in all fairness, could have been removed from the book altogether and would not have affected the story of the Shepherd King and the salvation of Blunder at all (or very minimally, at the least). It just left a bad taste in my mouth. And I’ll be honest, I was much more invested in the misfit love story that is the weird crazy girl and the emotionless quiet scary guy than I am with what was an all-too-typical love story with Ione and Elm.
The non-shock of who Ravyn actually is – This was written as if it was supposed to be a huge surprise, but if you couldn’t guess it in book one after you find out that the magic Providence Card chamber is on the grounds of Castle Yew, then you need to look four times before crossing the street instead of the standard two. Frankly, I’m not sure why this appeared to be presented as some huge twist when it all but had a flashing neon sign above it. The story was engaging enough without the need for a huge reveal, if you ask me.
The Epilogue: While I appreciate some form of closure on Ravyn and Elspeth’s story, considering the lengths he was willing to go to in order to save Elspeth, their reunion and HEA scene is woefully inadequate. I can’t figure out if it was intentionally open-ended or just the author getting tired. It felt like the latter to me, which really isn’t the impression you want to end a book on.
The Ugly:
Whoever copy-edited this book should be sent into the mist. I found an embarrassing number of spelling and formatting errors, which for a book that was as highly anticipated as this was with respect to the niche it serves, is really really shocking. I feel like I’m going to need to go back over my e-book version just to submit correction notices about them.
Keep It To Your Shelf 