booksthatburn's Reviews (1.46k)

LUCK IN THE SHADOWS is a slow burn series of heists and cons carried out in the name of spywork and finding out the truth of a murderous conspiracy as Alec slowly gets to know Seregil, his enigmatic rescuer, and the rest of his comrades.

Much of the story is Seregil introducing Alec to people and places. The reader is constantly in Alec's position in terms of information, as Seregil is pretty cagey about most things. He has a lot of secrets and is good at keeping them. I like the group who eventually emerge  as the main point-of-view characters in addition to Alec and Seregil. 

A lot of the worldbuilding is in the form of stories exchanged on the road, and explanations to Alec as he's being introduced to new situations (usually but not only with Seregil doing the explaining). For as much as Alec is being bombarded with new people, places, and information, for the reader each individual explanation is very low stakes. You don't need to remember everything Seregil said in order to understand the general flow of the story. I love books driven by banter, exploration, and heists, so this was a perfect balance for me. 

One little thing which was frustrating is that a pair of shady characters are described in terms of their large size and relative lack of intelligence in ways that seemed designed to make it clear that they weren't the masterminds of the nefarious acts they were involved in. Since few other characters were described in terms of body type, it stood out as unusual in addition to being fatphobic and ableist.

I didn't have much of a sense of where the story was headed until about halfway through. The story begins when Seregil and Alec, strangers to one another, are both imprisoned and Seregil breaks them both out. They begin by traveling in the general direction of Seregil's home, but along the way Seregil becomes ill and Alec has to get them the rest of the way while trying to keep Seregil alive. Once they arrive, Alec becomes immersed in Seregil's world of magic and cons as Seregil continues his education. The focus of the story is on the relationships between the characters, with any one activity feeling incidental much of the time. Along they way they start tryin to get to the bottom of a murderous political conspiracy which falsely implicates Seregil, trying to find the true perpetrators and clear Seregil's name.

I had a great time reading this and intend to continue with the series. Because of the slow pacing, a lot of my favorite things are mid- or late-book spoilers. The world and characters clearly have a lot more to offer and I'm excited to see where things will go from here. 

I didn't realize this was near-future or possibly contemporary, which was too close for comfort, given the topic.

Did get into it, I don't like the way it drags out.

Way hornier than I anticipated, but very good.

I love so much about this book, I just couldn't handle a particular topic that's triggering for me when I was already stressed (mostly in good ways) by the story so far. The worldbuilding is very cool, paying attention to language and tiny cultural differences existing between the decks. The audiobook performance is good. I like Aster as a main character.

I really wish I could handle finishing this, but I just can't.

Ryn is a gravedigger near a forest filled with "bone houses", walking corpses which have stayed in the forest and away from village... until now. 

Ryn is trying to make ends meet in a town where the dead aren’t staying buried and older folks are turning to cremation. Ellis travels to her village on his way to get answers about his past. It turns out they may be the solution to each other’s problems, and together they journey through the forest into the mountains.

The worldbuilding treats all explanations as being needed by someone who is familiar with the setting, generally, but not the specific local history and current undead menace. This means all exposition feels grounded in the world without being overwhelming. However, wile the worldbuilding is specific (inspired by Welsh folklore), it isn't very deep. It gradually incorporates stories of what happened nearby decades ago as Ryn and Ellis are traveling, but a lot of details are only lightly referenced. I love books focused on conversation and banter, and I don't mind the sketchy worldbuilding, but this turns the mood from travel companions into a romance at almost the final moment, which was disappointing. It's not enough chemistry to be satisfying if I want a book with romance, and too much of one if I just want a guy and a girl to be friends without being paired up. There's an animal sidekick, which is not a trope I enjoy, but at least this one kept leaving for long stretches.

The story takes a while to get going, spending a lot of time initially in the village with Ryn and her siblings. It smoothly incorporates Ellis's arrival and various interactions with the local noble who is making Ryn's life hell by demanding her house as payment for her missing uncle's debts. Ellis is a mapmaker, and eventually he and Ryn leave on a cartographical expedition after the village is attacked by bone houses. Once they do leave, it's a cycle of traveling (leaving the goat behind for plot reasons), sleeping, then interacting with someone or something and then the goat catches up again. It felt predictable (in fact I guessed at least three major twists before they happened, along with a smattering of minor events), but in a way that might end up feeling comforting on a re-read. 

I love this take on zombies, and I enjoyed the characters separately but don’t think they have much chemistry together. A good book, but not a great one. Read this for a journey story about loss, letting go, and living afterward.

This book would be threadbare until almost the end if all the white savior stuff was removed, there isn't enough otherwise to carry it.

As a sequel, continues Alanna's journey by showing her first year after getting her shield, one which is spent primarily with a Bazhir tribe and eventually become their shaman. It wraps up Jon and Alanna's relationship, rather spectacularly though late in the book. It also continues Jon's meeting with the governor of Persepolis in the first book, leading into Jon becoming the new Voice of the Tribes. There's a new storyline related to this particular tribe's shaman and three teenagers with the Gift who have been cut off from most of their community, within this storyline several things are introduced and resolved. It specifically leaves some things for the final book in the quartet, including but not limited to whatever magic Thom is working on, and someone working to destabilize George's position as King of the Rogue.

Alanna is the main character, and I think the sections following her are narrated similarly to the previous two books. It's hard to tell, because this has so many colonialist and racist asides where she makes bad guesses about what's going on with the Bazhir, particularly with the women of the tribe. She repeatedly brings up her frustration about the women wearing face veils, but doesn't express any curiosity into why they're wearing them, or their cultural significance as anything other than signaling someone has begun menstruating. 

By way of telling Kara and Kourrem her backstory, Alanna briefly summarizes the events of the first two books in a pretty complete manner, supplemented by a few additional explanations as fit the plot. A lot of the story could make sense to someone who hadn't read the first two books, but the final third or so is focused on storylines begun earlier. Overall, this would be a frustrating and probably confusing read for someone who used this as their entry point into the series. 

The main storyline is a composite of white savior tropes, formed from several different variations on the Bazhir needing or wanting someone from Tortall to help them change. The Bazhir are a people organized into many tribes, unified by the Voice of the Tribes. Alanna becomes a warrior adopted into one of the tribes via trial by combat, and her presence is the catalyst for this tribe in particular to become more willing for their women to participate in traditionally male parts of their society. The current Voice informs Alanna that Jon, the current Prince and future King of Tortall, must become the next Voice of the Tribes so that the tribes stop fighting against Tortall and become fully part of the kingdom. The part that makes both of these storylines troubling is that the Bazhir are clearly meant to be a fictional version of real-world desert dwelling peoples, and therefore major aspects of the plot are inextricable from white savior tropes and colonialist stereotypes. The ones related to Alanna’s defiance of separate standards for men and women are at least in keeping with the theme of Alanna bending gender norms (which is the backbone of the series). But it's definitely an issue for the current Voice to request one of the conquerors to become the new keeper of his people’s hearts and history. 

Alanna as the tribe’s savior coming in from the outside perhaps reaches its height when she ends up becoming the new shaman and taking three youngsters as apprentices. They had been rejected by the tribe for having the Gift, though I don’t see any good explanation for why they would be rejected as supposedly demon-possessed when the mere existence of the tribe’s original shaman means that the Bazhir know of magic and how to recognize it. My most lenient interpretation is that the shaman was greedy and didn’t want to be replaced, and so refused to acknowledge the magic of anyone who could possibly succeed him, which is certainly in keeping with his characterization. But the tribe’s refusal to do anything to fix the situation, literally waiting for the Balance to shift, means that explicitly in the narrative it only got better because Alanna arrived, which comes right back to her as a white savior.

The storylines I appreciate begin when Miles and Jon visit the Bazhir tribe to see Alanna and have Jon train as the next Voice. Through this time spent together outside of the palace and with Alanna’s identity no longer a secret, Alanna and Jonathan’s romance comes to a head when he asks her to marry him and then assumes she’s already said yes. The other follows George for a while after Alanna leaves the Bazhir to resume traveling.

The Ishak storyline bothered me when I read this as a kid, and now most of the book is frustrating. It has some important moments, but not enough to make it worth recommending.

Having trouble tracking the dynamics of the group since they’re already a team when the book begins. Also, for the audiobook, one of the narrators has a very flat affect which conflicts with the liveliness of the other narrator’s portions.

Now squire to Prince Jonathan, Alanna is on her way to being a knight and finally revealing that she's not the boy, Alan, that she's been disguised as since she became a page. 

The new worldbuilding focuses on Alanna's first experience of war, as well as some new examples of how magic works. Being a squire seems to give Alanna more freedom than being a page, able to travel see Thom at one point. This is also the introduction of Faithful, Alanna's cat whose meows sound like speech to her and may have a supernatural origin.

Both of Alanna’s suitors are older than her and are young adults by modern standards while she’s still a teenager, though are reasonably close to her in age. She’s fifteen to George’s twenty-one when he first kisses her and she rejects his advances. A year after the first kiss, George lets her know he’s interested in marrying her and is willing to wait years if need be, something that is on a fine line between endearing and creepy, saved mostly by their continued strong friendship and the fact that he does stop actively pursuing her after this conversation. Later on, she and Jonathan get together when she’s seventeen and he’s around twenty-one. At one point Jon gets possessive of her, a difficulty compounded by the fact that their relationship is a secret. Given the overall arc of the series, this works pretty well and is one step in Alanna figuring out what she wants from relationships and how she'll approach love and sex. 

Alanna's distrust of Duke Roger, sorcerer and cousin to the king, continues. She keeps being suspicious of him but then not doing anything about it (for eventually explained plot reasons). It covers the final years of Alanna's disguise as Alan, since she planned from the start to reveal her identity when she became a knight. There's a new storyline related to the war with Tusaine, beginning with diplomatic efforts and then leading into Alanna fighting in part of the campaign. I don't think there are any major things introduced and resolved within this book, since even the war with Tusaine serves as an extension of machinations begun earlier. Alanna's relationship with Jon begins here, but I don't think it could be called "resolved" at this point, it's implicitly on hold while Alanna is traveling but they haven't talked about it within the text.

This leaves the rest of Alanna's life for later, but specifically her next steps as a newly-revealed Lady Knight, travelling with Coram to figure out what she wants. Alanna is still the main narrator, but this includes small sections following other characters, most of whom have grown and changed from the first book. It covers several years of her life, and Alanna matures a lot during that time. It could make sense for someone to start here, as it doesn't rely on a lot of complicated backstory and it briefly recaps whatever is necessary. The main plot focuses on Alanna's time as a squire, ranging from her upcoming Ordeal of Knighthood, to the campaign against Tusaine, to Roger's meddling. It also shows more of Thom than the first book, now that he's almost done with his magical studies.