Title: Son of Shadows [Sevenwaters 2]
Author: Juliet Marillier
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Length: 608
Rating: 5 Star
Book Series Reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5.5, 6
Description/Synopsis:
Beautiful Sorcha is the courageous young woman who risked all to save her family from a wicked curse and whose love shattered generations of hate and bridged two cultures.
It is from her sacrifice that Sorcha’s brothers were brought home to their ancestral fortress Sevenwaters, and her life has known much joy.
But not all the brothers were able to fully escape the spell that transformed them into swans, and it is left to Sorcha’s daughter Liadan to help fulfill the destiny of the Sevenwaters clan. Beloved child and dutiful daughter, Liadan embarks on a journey that shows her just how hard-won was the peace that she has known all her life.
Liadan will need all of her courage to help save her family, for there are dark forces and ancient powers conspiring to destroy this family’s peace–and their world. And she will need all of her strength to stand up to those she loves best, for in the finding of her own true love, Liadan’s course may doom them all . . . or be their salvation.
Review – MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
I liked this book though not as much as the first one.
Just like I thought the story didn’t continue on in Sorcha’s perspective. Instead we live the world through one of her three children, her daughter Liadan. But we still get some Sorcha time so I was happy with that. However, Sorcha dies in this book and it totally broke my heart. She was my favorite person in the series so far. Red was in the book a little bit too, but not so much because he returns home for awhile after Sorcha died. I was sad that his family didn’t welcome him back with open arms. More sad, lots of the family has died off or left by the time this book happens.
The writing style in this book was very much like the first one which annoyed me a little. I liked the style because it worked because Sorcha couldn’t talk, but no one in this book has that issue. The writing style still works, it just didn’t work as well. I was also annoyed that lots of things that we didn’t get answers to in the last book where just left up in the air in this book to and you can kind of tell that we might not actually get any of those answers.
One thing I liked in the switch over between Liadan and Sorcha though was how differently they treated the fey. Sorcha did their bidding no matter the cost to herself and she respected them and liked them on some level, but Liadan pretty much hated the fey. She respected something older than the fey and really went out of her way to do things to piss them off because she didn’t want to be a pawn in their games. It was really interesting to see how Liadan would do things when I knew Sorcha would have done the opposite.
Liadan’s older sister really got on my nerves, I was glad when she went away. I didn’t feel the same way when her pet Raven went away though, I wish she got to keep him for longer. I loved the love interest between Bran and Liadan also because it was vastly different between how things happened for Red and Sorcha. My favorite parts of the book I think were when she was with him and his crew, specially after she had his baby. The dynamic was so interesting I soaked it all up like a sponge. I wish there was more of it! When you find out who Bran actually is everything is so shattering. The memories we have of his story from the last book do not match up to where we are now and when you find out the truth of it all you just want to cry. Poor shattered memories.
So yes, still an awesome book. I have heard a couple of people actually liked this one more than the last but it didn’t strike so close to my heart as the first. I look forward to the next one!
Till Next Time…