Shadow Scale (Seraphina, #2)

by Rachel Hartman

Seraphina took the literary world by storm with 8 starred reviews and numerous “Best of” lists. At last, her eagerly awaited sequel has arrived—and with it comes an epic battle between humans and dragons.
 
The kingdom of Goredd: a world where humans and dragons share life with an uneasy balance, and those few who are both human and dragon must hide the truth. Seraphina is one of these, part girl, part dragon, who is reluctantly drawn into the politics of her world. When war breaks out between the dragons and humans, she must travel the lands to find those like herself—for she has an inexplicable connection to all of them, and together they will be able to fight the dragons in powerful, magical ways.
 
As Seraphina gathers this motley crew, she is pursued by humans who want to stop her. But the most terrifying is another half dragon, who can creep into people’s minds and take them over. Until now, Seraphina has kept her mind safe from intruders, but that also means she’s held back her own gift. It is time to make a choice: Cling to the safety of her old life, or embrace a powerful new destiny?
 
Praise for Seraphina:
 
A New York Times Bestseller
An Indie Bestseller
Winner of the William C. Morris Debut Award
Winner of the Cybil Award for Teen Fantasy and Science Fiction
An Amazon Top 20 Teen Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Book of the Year
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year
A Library Journal Best Young Adult Literature for Adults Selection
A Booklist Editors’ Choice
An ABA New Voices Pick
A Publishers Weekly Flying Start Author
An ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book
An ALA-YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults Book
Recipient of 8 Starred Reviews
 
“Beautifully written, well-rounded characters, and some of the most interesting dragons I’ve read in fantasy for a long while. An impressive debut novel; I can’t wait to see what Rachel Hartman writes next.”
—Christopher Paolini, New York Times bestselling author of Eragon
 
“A novel that will appeal to both fans of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon series and Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown.”
—Entertainment Weekly

• ISBN10: 0375866574
• ISBN13: 9780375866579
• Publish Date: 10 March 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Random House Books for Young Readers
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 608
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780375866579

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

TW: Rape, Mind Control/Invasion, Attempted Suicide

Starts with a male narrator recapping Seraphina like a history teacher. After finishing the book, the question he asks seems all the more misguided. He totally askes about the wrong person.

Then there's a prologue that's a flashback to Ulma telling Seraphina about a creation myth and helping with her garden and dealing with Genula.

After this, the story finally starts off 3 months after Seraphina ends.

It started off well, then went off the rails. The last several hours I was frustrated and pissed off. Seraphina made a good showing for investigating, being resourceful, and making moves in the first book. This time around she's saved by Abdo, slow to pick up the obvious, and moved like a pawn. It's like she burned up all her agency and brain power in the beginning.


Notes:
->No idea why it's called Shadow Scale.
->Plague and Plague doctors.
->More interesting history
->Doesn't explain how Northern P-country (sorry can't spell b/c audiobook) was able to treaty so well with the dragons.
-> Northern P-country language sounds AMAZING.
->Trans* woman character!
-> Viva la Revolution!
->Okay, now I'm loving Eska.
-> Where is Millie? I miss her.
-> The old knights are funny.
-> Fucking Kiggs. I am disappoint.
-> Fuckity fuck Jannoula.
->Go Team Free Will!! Why you so passive? FFS, get it done!
->Selda is basically a disembodied voice this whole time and it's awful.
->Seraphina WHY ARE YOU BEING SO DAMN FUCKING SLOW??!

The rest of my notes were counting down the hours while Seraphina ghosts around mopping and lamenting "I just can't think of what to do!"while ITS SO OBVIOUS!!! I was so tired of her pacisism, dragging her feet, and just being so damn dull and annoying. It really could've and should've been shorter. HOURS SHORTER.

Then, it finally ends and it doesn't even mesh well. The kumbiaya and saving the worst while sacrificing the great for token sadness is bullshit. Should've just made it all happily ever to match the stupid resolution.

The Surprise Sapphric Love:
There is not enough foundation to just believe this. There should have been more of THAT, more moments between them, more on the page. Being private? FINE. But don't have a heterosexual relationship dominate and then throw a scrap in at the end. No pat on the back for this shit.

I am so fucking disappointed in Shadow Scale.

[Terri M. LeBlanc]

I read Seraphina back in 2013 and was thrilled last year to learn there would be a sequel. I was lucky enough to get approved for the ARC of Shadow Scale on Netgalley just days before its release earlier this year. I put off reading it. Seraphina was one of my top reads in 2013, I was worried that I wouldn’t remember much of the complicated world and that the sequel wouldn’t live up to the first book. To prepare myself, I checked out the audiobook of Seraphina and immersed myself in the world of Goredd again.

Re-reading Seraphina helped me become familiar with the world and odd language again. Upon initial examination, I can see how the immense size of Shadow Scale (608 pages!) can be overwhelming, daunting even. And once I finished, I can understand how some might be disappointed in how Seraphina’s journey came to an end. Personally, I adored Shadow Scale.

Shadow Scale gets a thumbs up from me. It goes against the typical young adult tropes of love triangles and end of the world extremes. I was mesmerized by Seraphina’s journey. I was delighted by some of her grotesques and terrified by others. There are some wonderful revelations that are deftly handled. In the end, I’m happy I decided to read Shadow Scale. I hope my library gets the audiobook version soon!

Shadow Scale wraps up Seraphina’s journey of self-discovery. After years in near draconic isolation, she is forced out in the world encountering situations and feelings she has been denied because of what she is. I was fascinated by how the different countries treated Seraphina and others like her. It was a reflection of how the actual world often treats people who have real or perceived differences. I often asked myself, as I was reading, if I was more like the people of Porphyry or the citizens of SamSam when I encounter others? I hope I am like those living in Porphyry.

I adored the others that Seraphina shared her journey with. Abdo was my absolute favorite. His joie de vivre poured off the page and was infectious. When Abdo graced a scene, my heart sang. I always seemed to have a smile on my face when he was bounced around the page. My heart broke when he faced the greatest villain. It was difficult to see someone so full of life suffer so greatly.

Believe it or not, the dragons brought a bit a humor to the story. The Comonont is forced to stay in his saarantras for most of the novel. His bumblings and attempts to cope with human emotion brought me some laugh out loud moments. Later in the novel, the Comonot actually transforms back to his saarantras JUST to feel a certain emotion he had not experienced yet. It was quite an embarrassing moment for Seraphina!

I’m sure that some readers were hoping for more romance between Kiggs and Seraphina. I was happy that it stayed in the background as they had planned near the end of book one. I was happy with how Hartman handled their relationship and didn’t mind that not all the details were shared. After all, in my opinion, this is not a book about Seraphina finding love. It’s a book about Seraphina finding herself.


This review was originally posted on Second Run Reviews

[elysium]

Oh dear, I don’t know what to say here… Because I loved the first book and I almost didn’t finish this one. So yeah, I’m disappointed…

It was just so boring. Seraphina leaves the castle to find other half-dragons. She meets new half-dragon, there’s drama, she meets another one, there’s more drama and so on.

We barely see Kiggs, the love interest of our heroine, and even less of her uncle Orma. We see very little of the people from the first book and instead there’s lot of new half-dragons.

Then there’s Jannoula who’s the main villain of the book. And the sad fact is that this is more Jannoula’s book than Seraphina’s. Jannoula is manipulator and good strategist who has no kindness or remorse. Seraphina is just an observer to these things.

I really wanted to love this but sadly it ended up being a disappointment.

[laughingrachel]

A solid follow-up novel to Seraphina, but ultimately I was left wanting more.

Hartman introduces a vast and varied new cast of characters and manages them very well. They felt real and rounded and I came to care about what happened to them. Overall, though, I think the book suffered from too many ideas. A lot happens in this novel, and almost all of it is intriguing and interesting but I felt like we never get to go in depth into most of them. As a consequence, the ending felt a little rushed and abrupt.

[tweetybugshouse]

his was a good follow up but i think that author spent a lot of time on seraphina finding all the other half dragons and it did sort of lag for me in the middle but i did like all the little quirks and things that she discovers as she looking for them. : I love that Hartman expanded this world, allowing Seraphina to tread a dangerous, exploratory path. There is a lot that happens in this book, and it all ends with a satisfactory conclusion. However, it did have a pattern of alternating between engaging and... Less engaging, which made it flow a little less smoothly as a reading experience. Still a good story though.

[inlibrisveritas]

Shadow Scale had me a bit worried towards the beginning. I had a difficult time getting into it and readjusting to all of the odd words and concepts, but in the end I have fully remembered why I enjoyed the first book so much and now I have nothing but love for it.

Shadow Scale picks up around three months after the events of Seraphina and starts off rather slow. The tension between Goredd and the Old Ard is becoming increasingly violent and a plan has been formed to find all of the half dragons they can and try to put a stop to the fighting. Most of this book focuses on Seraphina’s travels to find the others and we get a look at the rest of the world other than Goredd. I loved seeing the differences in each place as well as how differently each treated the half-dragons, and of all of the Polyphria shines the brightest. We also get to see other half dragons besides those we finally met in the latter half of Seraphina (Abdo, Dame Okra, and Lars), and they are incredibly varied in their appearances and personalities. One such the half dragon who can worm her way into other people’s minds. I don’t want to say too much about her, for fear of spoilers, but she is one seriously fierce and messed up woman and part of me really loves her for it.

There were some surprisingly additions to this which basically made me want to kiss the book and buy tons of copies to give to people, which I will also refrain from mentioning in detail but have to do with diversity and progression.I will say that the pacing in the book is comparable to a rollercoaster. It takes a while for it to make it’s way up the largest hill but once it does it sets off on a pace that absolutely refused to let me set it down for too long. I wouldn’t recommend these books to a casual fantasy reader though. If you don’t enjoy a ton of world-building, new vocabulary and a lot of characters you might want to borrow it or simply skip it for the time being. I also really appreciated the fact that the romance is not a focus in these, and that while it is present both characters involved know there are much bigger things to deal with.

I would say that Shadow Scale is a very strong sequel to Seraphina, but does require some reacquainting since it has been so long since the first book. The world building is still fantastic and the depth of the emotion and ‘humanity’ (for the lack of a better word) was more than enough to endear me to most of the characters involved. Shadow Scale is a stunning conclusion.

[Suz @ Bookish Revelations]

Shadow Scale, is the intriguing and captivating sequel to Serephina. Rachel Hartman explores Seraphina's world and the relationship between humans and dragons, revealing twists and turns that you won't see coming. It's beautifully written and stunningly imaginative. I really enjoyed reading this one a little bit more than the first one, because I found it a lot easier for me to sink into the world and just get lost in the characters and the conflict between the humans and the dragons. For anyone who is a fan of Fantasy worlds, interesting character build up, and dragons this is the book that you'll fall in love with.

Original and brilliantly written, this is a book and a world full of imagination that will absolutely wow you from beginning until end. The characters are multi-layered and the plot is equal parts entertaining and compelling. Seriously, I don't even know how to begin to tell you how EPIC this book was in every single way, how it affected ALL THE FEELS I had! I feel like I'm at a loss for words here, because while I enjoyed the first book (Seraphina) I found it a little hard to follow along with. With Shadow Scale, I had no problems at all. In fact, from the moment I started reading this book, I didn't want to put it down until I was finished with it.

It's exciting, full of heart, and has so much emotional depth that you can't help but fall deeper in love with all of these characters. The unexpected twists and turns will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat and leave you wanting more. The broad expanse of the various cultures explored within this amazing novel alone, is enough to wet any fantasy lover's pallet. If you are looking for a story that is built on layers of mythology, emotion, and various cultures then this is the book that I would recommend to you.


Full review to come soon!

[anne]

I really liked Seraphina, and this sequel was OK, but I have issues with the ending. Not sure I would like to explain the ending to students - certainly not the usual fantasy ending.