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Loading... Shadowborn (Light & Shadow, #1) (edition 2013)| 142 | 1 | 195,212 | 
(3.5) | 2 | Friendship and loyalty, secrets and intrigue, prophecy and illusion... I was four hours old when I was cast out by my mother. I was cursed, she said. Kinder to let me die in the snow and the wind than let me live, only to be betrayed. I was twelve when the Duke found me and turned me into a Shadow: bodyguard, spy, and assassin. I was fourteen when he brought me to court. He wanted his niece on the throne by any means possible. I was to be her weapon, wielded as she and the Duke saw fit. But she wants more. She's playing her own game. And the court holds its own secrets. A war centuries in the making is ready to erupt and we are in a race against time to keep it from consuming whole empires. ... If we survive. Shadowborn is the first book in Moira Katson's acclaimed Light & Shadow series. Based on the intrigue and shifting loyalties of the War of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty that followed, Light & Shadow exists in a world that never was - a world of magic and prophecy....… (more) |
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None ▾Book descriptions Friendship and loyalty, secrets and intrigue, prophecy and illusion... I was four hours old when I was cast out by my mother. I was cursed, she said. Kinder to let me die in the snow and the wind than let me live, only to be betrayed. I was twelve when the Duke found me and turned me into a Shadow: bodyguard, spy, and assassin. I was fourteen when he brought me to court. He wanted his niece on the throne by any means possible. I was to be her weapon, wielded as she and the Duke saw fit. But she wants more. She's playing her own game. And the court holds its own secrets. A war centuries in the making is ready to erupt and we are in a race against time to keep it from consuming whole empires. ... If we survive. Shadowborn is the first book in Moira Katson's acclaimed Light & Shadow series. Based on the intrigue and shifting loyalties of the War of the Roses and the Tudor dynasty that followed, Light & Shadow exists in a world that never was - a world of magic and prophecy.... ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description
| Book description |
"You, Catwin, no longer exist. You no longer have a fate of your own, a will of your own, or indeed a soul of your own. You will go where Miriel goes, you will watch instead of being watched, you will hear instead of being heard.”
Catwin has always been good at being unseen…that is, until one fateful mistake brings her to the attention of the Duke of Voltur: the commander of the bloodiest battle in living memory, a man of legendary ruthlessness who is determined to be the power behind the throne. To this end, he has chosen Catwin to be a Shadow—spy, shield, and blade—to his niece Miriel as she works to catch the eye of the King.
But the Duke’s carefully laid plans are only a piece of the intrigue swirling within the royal court. Shadows gather: legacies of the centuries-long rivalries for power, old betrayals, the endless plots of the courtiers, and the murmur of rebellion in the southern provinces.  | |
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5
To get the bad out of the way, Shadowborn had some very obvious gaffes in editing that would send me out of the story pretty quickly. There weren't a lot, but it was the sort of things that made reading the line awkward and made you pause (wayward "to" when it should be "the" for instance). Edited 8/5: The author has re-issued a corrected version of the Trilogy on Smashwords, Amazon and Kobo. My review is from the previous version before the upload of the revised versions.
Also the book takes a long while to get to where it wants the reader to be at in terms of the relationship between Miriel and Catwin.
As for the good! Mysterious prophecy, sneaky girls, sneakier assassins and learning that you can't expect life to be fair make for an engaging fantasy.
Told from Catwin's POV, but in the past tense (its almost as if she's narrating her life story to someone), we see her go from a mischievous and curious child to a wary, young woman. She wants something more from her life, but when she's given that something more she balks at what that really means. Several times Catwin makes mention of 'If only I had known...well things could have been different.' as she talks about important turning points in her young life. Would she have taken that dare if she knew the pain she'd later endure? Would she have trusted Temar if she knew what lurked behind his questions?
Because Catwin only knows what she remembers and suspects happened, much of Miriel is a mystery at first that we puzzle out as Catwin does. Neither girl is given an easy task, though they both think the other lucky for theirs. The Duke's sledgehammer approach to getting what he wants puts the girls at odds with each other when it would have been a benefit for them to be friends. A lesson learned late and at great cost I might add.
So what's in store for these two? Well Catwin's prophecy hangs over their heads (who betrays her? or does she betray someone? what will end?) as well as Miriel's own need for independence and disillusionment with the world. So in other words FUN TIMES KIDDIES. (