Reviews By Hayden

I picked this booked up unintentionally. I had read the previous book The Ember Blade  a number of years back, but I had completely forgotten about the series. Normally I do a quick refresher of the previous books if they aren't fresh in my mind. This was not the case with The Shadow Casket . It took a little while to get caught up with the story given that the previously books was a faint memory, but I don't think this diminished my enjoyment of the book in any way. There is a bit of a time jump so you are thrown into a new series of events rather than a quick continuation of the previous book. The Shadow Casket has one major point going for it: the characters are vibrant and interesting. Wooding has a great sense of a character's arc. Whether it is the druid Vika's desperate search for power, Harod's loss of his great love Orica, or Grub's quest to become a hero, we see decisions consistent with their fundamental drive and we get to see all the glorious conseq...

This is not the sort of book that I normally read -- usually it's sword and sorcery or some spacefaring science fiction. Rarely do I ever read a story about a black woman from 1979 travelling back in time to the antebellum south to save a slaveowner that happens to be her ancestor. I guess there is a first time for everything. It's a good book, and it feels silly even saying it. Is it a great book? Maybe, but there's a lot to it and it's hard for me to fully digest. The main character -- Dana -- is both what makes the book work, but also what makes the book feel forced. She's detached, hyperrational, and at times robotic. I feel like all of these qualities were necessary. The story wouldn't work otherwise, because we are being invited to take a clinical look at what it meant to be a slave and a slaveowner. Are there parts in the story where her behaviour doesn't seem normal? You bet, but if she responded in any other way we would lose the sense of the outsid...