(Amy) Well, it may have taken me a year to get around to reading it, but I enjoyed the second installment every bit as much as the first. I don't actually have an extensive review on tap, I'm afraid - it's been too long since I finished it, and while it's far from a Generic Fantasy Product, it follows the epic fantasy forms closely enough to make a thumbnail sketch of its plot sound absolutely dismal. I promise it's not, though. I loved every minute, and I'm as burned out on the same ol' same ol' versions of epic fantasy as the next gal. Good stuff.
( http://weblog.siliconcerebrate.com/ze... ) ( )

I feel a bit suckered into this series; I hadn't realised that 'Shadowmarch' wasn't a stand-alone book, and this is exactly the kind of doorstop multi-volume fantasy I try to avoid. Life's too short to be dragged into endless Lord of the Rings wannabes. parts of the story are interesting enough, and Tad keeps a lot of balls in the air, but it does feel like a huge paid-by-the-word 'epic' that's painful to slog through without really getting anywhere. ( )

http://www.bookgeeks.co.uk/2008/02/26... ( )

This is the follow on to Shadowmarch, the first book in Tad's latest series. It reveals a bit more behind the reasons for the invasion by the fey, though nothing like a true explanation comes out yet. The characters are just as mch in the dark about what's going on as we are, though the forces behind the plot are slowly being revealed. This is interesting, complex and compelling, as good as Tad's other works. This has the feel that it is right on the edge of disaster, but there is always hope, somewhere. ( )

The second in the Shadowmarch series. This volume focuses a bit more on the humans than the faeries. I do like the faeries more, even if they aren't exactly nice. Perhaps because they aren't exactly nice. This is me, after all. Barrick and Vansen continue behind the Shadowline, Barrick still in thrall to Yasammez. Briony is on the run, the castle having been taken over by her cousins. The autarch has hired a mercenary to find his erstwhile consort (and that mercenary is as nasty as the autarch is crazy). King Olin is still a prisoner. Of course, none of the plotlines conclude as this is a trilogy. I was surprised I liked the first one better, actually; normally I like the second book in trilogies better because the first has to take so much time setting things up. Again, I attribute it to the lack of faeries. ( )