Shattered Chains

i enjoyed this one a bit more than whispering woods! the biggest thing that jumped out at me was that the fight scenes felt more character-motivated and consequently didn’t feel like they dragged in places like happened a few times in whispering woods. and literally every single time in arena.

i’m sorry! i know arena keeps catching strays in these reviews, i promise i’ll let it go, but it was just such a genuinely unpleasant read! plus, it’s actually much more relevant to talking about shattered chains than it was to talking about whispering woods, since norreen (or rakel? unclear which name she prefers) was a major character and garth shows up a couple of times. i kinda love that emery writes garth in a way that makes it feel show more like he’s much more aware that garth is kinda shitty? and norreen/rakel gets far more agency in this book than she does in arena. though like, she is damseled and put through some pretty grisly torture that borders on fridging even though she survives, so i don’t want to give this book too much credit in that regard. (but, like. i would certainly rather be tortured than be a supporting character in arena.)

when it comes to pre-revisionist story, i still think most of the good stuff has been in duelist articles rather than the novels, but with a sample size of 3 the novels are incrementally improving each time so far! so that’s nice at least. show less

This was a large step in this series. The first one made me not want to read it. However, this brought old characters and new ones to make up for the previous novels. The beginning took awhile to get started but once the plot was established had a good flow to it. I think the best part of the whole novel was the last third of the book. The characters that they met, the places they went, and the battles they fought were the best at the end. The resolution of the novel was well planned and it lays out the makings of the third novel. I am looking forward to the next installment in this series.

F/SF