Review: Sea of Shadows by Kelley Armstrong
Summary
They hear the spirits.They must obey.
In the Forest of the Dead, where the empire’s worst criminals are exiled, twin sisters Moria and Ashyn are charged with a dangerous task. For they are the Keeper and the Seeker, and each year they must quiet the enraged souls of the damned.
Only this year, the souls will not be quieted.
Ambushed and separated by an ancient evil, the sisters’ journey to find each other sends them far from the only home they’ve ever known. Accompanied by a stubborn imperial guard and a dashing condemned thief, the girls cross a once-empty wasteland, now filled with reawakened monsters of legend, as they travel to warn the emperor. But a terrible secret awaits them at court–one that will alter the balance of their world forever.
My thoughts
With Sea of Shadows Kelley Armstrong wrote an epic fantasy story. Not only did she write high fantasy for the first time but also an epic adventure that grabbed me right from the first page and wouldn’t let me go until the end.
Great worldbuilding
This fictional world Kelley created is amazing. I loved the system with their seeker and keeper and especially how we get to know about things like these. There is a lot of information about this world because she put some deep thoughts into all of this and makes this feel like it’s real. It didn’t feel like info dumping though. You get all the information through things characters do. It’s not characters explaining something to others just so that the reader gets not know it but you learn by following them on their journey.
What I liked most about this world were its monsters. Monsters from stories which suddenly become real. They are all different to each other, each one a new exciting and life threatening creature, ones I’ve never read about before. It felt like with every new creature they got more and more ferocious.
An action packed adventure
These monsters but also some characters make for an extremely thrilling story. One life threatening situation after the other without it feeling exaggerated. I was constantly fearing for these characters’ lives. What I liked about these situations is that the characters never got out of them too easily. Not too small a number of people die throughout this book. Also: The characters work together and depend on each other instead of one playing the hero and another one being the helpless one, always in need of rescue.
Multiple, distinguishable POVs
On top of all this comes something I always love: multiple point of views. Two to be precise. And these two are twins. I always love this, especially when they come with such distinct voices as these too. Funny thing is: I read this as an ebook and didn’t see the heading first that tell you which pov you’re going to read from. I just always new myself by reading the first 2 to 3 sentences.
These two girls are quite different even with being twins. I liked one of them better than the other and always preferred her chapters but still enjoyed reading the other one too.
At one point I actually thought there was a mistake, a chapter missing, because they confused me quite a bit/some aspect about the story played a trick on me. When I found out what was really going on I was amazed and impressed by what Kelley did there and loved this book even more than I already did.
A Kelley Armstrong given: the grumpy guy
As if all that wasn’t enough to love this book there is one more thing: the grumpy, unfriendly guy. Of course I fell for him. That’s always the case with books by Kelley. She creates these grumpy but somehow interesting, unique and therefore lovable guys that I can’t get enough of. And it’s definitely his fault that I can’t wait to read the next book in the series. That I need it NOW. There wasn’t a cliffhanger but he revealed something about himself I just can’t accept as the truth and I need to know what that secret is really about.
Overall
This is Kelley Armstrong’s first epic fantasy novel and she did an amazing job. Awesome worldbuilding, great characters and two unique POVs which tell a thrilling story that will keep you up until late at night.
