Shadow Crown (Shadow Crown, #1)

by Kristen Martin

[writehollydavis]

I've never been so conflicted when reading a book. There were times I was really into the plot and characters and other times I wanted to flip a table at all the writing errors. I found myself editing the book as I read, which is a very bad thing.

I'll start with the good. I thought the illusie's powers were cool and liked how Kristen weaved all the characters and subplots together. There were also quite a few surprises in the plot I didn't see coming. I think I enjoyed the chapters with Cerylia and Opal the most, oh, and of course Juniper! (Although I doubt they would've said 'fur-parent' in the land of Trendalath).

Ugh, now onto the bad. ** spoiler alert ** The first time I noticed this book was off was on pg. 199, when Arden tells herself 'I am darkness. It's all I know." Wait, what? SHE was the one who didn't want to kill the Soames just for being illusie, while Rydan was the assassin gung-ho on killing them! I was so confused because other than Arden's history of being a successful assassin, she had yet to show a shred of darkness. I felt like Kristen was trying to force the 'dark' part of 'dark fantasy'. I know she loves and drew a lot of inspiration from The Young Elites by Marie Lu, but Marie Lu knew how to have a dark protagonist. Arden is being force-fed it and those parts where she was 'tempted' by the darkness just never made sense and seemed awkward and out of place.

Another thing, the story lacked setting descriptions and worldbuilding i.e. page 399: 'Still decadent and rich behind the castle wall; filthy and sullied in every other direction.' Do you know what this city looks like? Me neither. She often TELLS us things instead of SHOWS us, which honestly makes me cringe. I hate seeing such obvious mistakes in a published book, things that Kristen herself teaches us in her YouTube videos. Another thing that irked me is that she'd show us a character's emotion and then tell us about it in a sentence right afterward. Don't do that! We are smart readers. We get it.

I was also put off by the many plot holes throughout the novel, such as Clive's, Elvira's, and Xerin's powers not being used sooner for their benefit. I was also irked by King Tymond and couldn't understand how he was the villain. If he was truly evil, he wouldn't be setting up this whole execution for Vira for just talking to Rydan, while Rydan who failed his mission is left in prison. And we never see or hear anything of the other Cruex assassins. Did Tymond's kingdom know about the Savants and that they were illusie? Wouldn't they question why he isn't using his assassins to find Arden? Other than banishing the illusie years ago, what has Tymond done that is evil?? He never went out to search for his son, but then when he's gathering the Savant, all of a sudden now he's searching for him? The King actually seems very weak, as he didn't kill Clive for sleeping with his wife, and even allows him back with the Savant! Why???

I REALLY wanted to like this book more, but I said the same thing about Restitution. I admire Kristen Martin as a YouTuber and person but I think she needs to spend more time on her novels. It would do her good to enlist more beta readers and critique partners and go through more rounds of revisions/edits before sending her book out into the world. I will likely read Book 2 of this series, Renegade Cruex, for I did enjoy the story, but only if the writing has drastically improved.