Shadow of the Fox (Shadow of the Fox, #1)

by Julie Kagawa

[sa090]

Step aside Smoke in the Sun, this is easily the most disappointing book in 2018 for me so far.

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Do you know when some anime fans watch enough anime about a certain genre and then decide to write a fan fiction about it for some reason with the same cliche archetypes? That is the Shadow of the Fox in a nutshell. It’s my first time reading a Julie Kagawa book, so I’m not familiar with her writing style or usual thought process, but I do know that this book reads like such an overused anime concept that I could literally visualize the characters. Thing is, just because something is built over overused ideas, it doesn’t automatically makes it bad, the execution of said ideas will decide that but with this book, it’s just severely lacking for me to try to love.

The plot is simple enough, but this book is not a mission per book kind of thing, it’s a long journey to get to Yumeko and Tatsumi’s destination. What the two of them end up doing, places visited, people meeting and joining them feels exactly what I’ve seen previously in anime, most recent one in memory would be Ushio to Tora, which has many elements to share with this book. The difference here however, is that Ushio to Tora had compelling characters to make me enjoy the series, Shadow of the Fox does not. Yumeko could have been interesting, but I find her incredibly annoying, incredibly naive and incredibly ignorant in human interaction although she shouldn’t be... not to this extent that is.

Tatsumi is the brooding archetype, he’s a very boring guy to follow just for the sake of the fact that it’s not the first time I see this type of character around so having someone check all the boxes of gloomy without actually having qualities to make them likable in any way, is a difficult one to swallow every time. The characters we end up meeting weren’t that great either, the only one that potentially raises my interest is the “Master” in the epilogue and I believe that I have a pretty good idea of who it might be without reading the rest of this series.

The romance being so tame is one of the good things about it, alongside the name drops and creatures seen, but by the end of it it’s clear to see that this is going to be a set up for one which is also expected. But I can only hope that the sequels, assuming I ever pick them up, won’t be heavy with it.

I don’t know, I’m just so disappointed. I love Japanese Mythology, I love their folklore and I love it even more when we have demons and such around. But this book is not a fun book to read if you’re used to what is being told, I think my exposure to anime, manga and light novels for so long (Light novel are a recent addition) has made me very difficult to impress when it comes to books like these. Although I do still think that this book is really not that good of one, which I will go in details about in the comments below, since I’ve got quite a few things to discuss with spoilers.

Final rating: 1.5