Hi everyone. Welcome back to Bibliophilia Book Reviews. Today I’m reviewing Shadow of the Wicked by Douglas W.T. Smith. For this review, I received an ARC by the author in exchange for an honest review. This novella will be published July 1st, 2021. Click here to visit the author’s website.
This review has minor spoilers.
Shadow of the Wicked (and I’ll pause right here, albeit briefly, to say, how cool a name is that?!) is the story of two brothers, twins, that are both captured and tortured by the same man, Pius. Now, Pius imprisons Jaromir and Talmage for different reasons, but ultimately, he does so to break an alliance created between Jaromir’s order and the Three Kingdoms to destroy sorcery and sorcerers like Pius on the one hand, and on the other to use Talmage and rule as the Sorcerer Monarch through him.
Now, I will start this review by saying that I am a twin. And any book where the main characters are twins will always intrigue me, because I know from personal experience how close a relationship between twins can be; it is closer than close. It is almost as if you are your twin, and your twin is you. The differences between you only come once you are born and you live your own lives separately. So, when I read the synopsis for this novella I knew that I wanted to read it. Both Jaromir and Talmage, whose parents were killed by sorcerers, have become so marked and estranged from one another because of this event in their lives that they basically don’t know each other anymore at the beginning of the story. And what I liked about the two protagonists is how different their lives are now; how each one of them took opposite paths in life due to this traumatic event in their lives. Jaromir loathes magic and is set upon ridding the world of it and its practitioners (without telling his brother about his intentions), whereas Talmage found refuge in magic and continued his training to become a sorcerer (behind Jaromir’s back) with Agustin. This is all sorts of broken and twisted. I like it.
Novellas are not my forte; I will admit to that, and while reading this one I was once again reminded of that. Why? Because I wanted more. There is so much about these characters that we don’t see, and that I would have loved to see. For example, the event that broke Jaromir and Talmage’s relationship; the death of their parents, the starting point of it all, or how Jaromir created his order and became a warrior or how Talmage’s secret slowly eats him up and is taken advantage of by Pius due to his weakened mental state because of it; because of all the guilt and grief he is carrying. It all would have been so good to read about, but I understand that novellas are short in their nature and adding all of this would have changed the whole book completely. But you can’t blame a girl for wanting to see more of this world…unfortunately there was not enough space to explain it all. Nonetheless, I still think that a little bit more backstory would have enriched the whole story more.
Trigger warning. Shadow of the Wicked is not a novella for the faint of heart and readers should be warned against torture (as it happens throughout several chapters of the book) and death. However, I did find that in wanting to create a bigger effect with these torture scenes sometimes they dragged on, and they made the story slow down a bit. Other times, between all the chain-pulling and candle-carrying, the scenes blurred together and got a little confusing. And I admit, this made me struggle to get through some of the chapters and it affected my overall enjoyment of the story. However, this is not to say that the author’s writing is bad; it isn’t. This is just a result of my personal journey while reading this novella, and I still recommend it to any who want to read it. Nevertheless, the book’s writing style may not be for everyone.
Rating 3.75 stars
Disclaimer. The pictures in this post are not mine. They were both used with permission of the author.
