I don’t really know if these books are considered ‘adult’ fantasy or YA, but while Yelena (and Opal) start out as teens, time actually does pass in this series, and everyone gets older. (I don’t mind characters dying when it forwards the story, but it aggravates me when they are killed just so the story has more ‘grit’.) And I really, really appreciated the fact that she didn’t feel a need to kill off a bunch of people in the final book just to prove how hardcore her story is. I couldn’t believe that Snyder was able to wrap everything up in Dawn Study, but she did. There were some great twists and I enjoyed every page. In the last two books, the action turned up to about level ten and never looked back. It worked fine, and it was important to truly understand things that had happened to him in the past in order for the actions in the next two books to have their full impact. Plus, we obviously couldn’t have Valek mentally meandering back in time when he’s in the middle of doing something exciting, so the Valek sections were slow on action and long on background. Instead of inserting a paragraph break, it would just sort of muddle back into the real-time story and was always a bit of a jolt. But his mind kept drifting back to the day of his first mission…” And then it would launch into the story of his first mission, which was fine, except Snyder did not do a very good job of differentiating between flashback time and real time. Snyder really wanted to give the readers a lot of background on Valek, and did so by having Valek sort of travel down memory lane, so it would be something like, “Valek sat in his office, sifting through papers. While I was excited to hear from some of the other characters, I was concerned that it would bog down the pace, and did a bit, especially in Shadow Study. The Aroma of Books //Rants//Raves//Reviews//Īt first, I was a little leery of the multiple perspectives.

Pargeter, Edith (also writing as Ellis Peters).

Mertz, Barbara (also writing as Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels).

Christie, Agatha (also writing as Mary Westmacott).Children’s History: Landmark, Signature Biographies, and We Were There.#BookSpin & #BookSpinBingo (Litsy Challenge).

Shadow study by maria v snyder