Stars: ★★.5/5
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?
I think I wrote this review at least five times in my head before attempting to write anything down, trying to make sense of my disappointment. I would like to mention that I absolutely loved Hartman’s first book, Seraphina. Her writing is filled with such style, and I was so impressed with her debut. Seraphina was so complex and fully realized. It took me by complete surprise. I waited almost two years to read her follow up, Shadow Scale. There was never even the slightest doubt in my mind about whether or not I would love Shadow Scale. But…I really didn’t, not even a little.
I can’t even pinpoint what exactly went wrong, it was just a little of everything. I felt the book was too long without enough actually happening, characters were acting in ways that seemed strange, and there was so little essence of what made me love Seraphina present in Shadow Scale — I think that’s what really disappointed me, that this book felt nothing like Seraphina. This didn’t feel like a proper sequel, it drops so much of what made the first book so amazing. The story didn’t seem to pick up steam until the last twenty percent, and even then it was all sorts of rushed. I don’t know why this series is only a duology, when it could have easily been three or four books. This sequel was basically begging for another book there was so much crammed into it. There was too much going on in Shadow Scale, yet nothing really happened until the last fifty pages. Too many things were competing for attention.
This book was just a mess for me. It seemed like the wrong direction for this book to take, with so much of the story being taken up with travelling, and the reader being assaulted with new people, new places and new things every hundred pages. It was too much at once, and there was at least two books worth of content in Shadow Scale. It was really too much information and not enough actual story. Seraphina struck the right balance of story and character development, worldbuilding and adventure, and that was missing in Shadow Scale.
With the writing itself, I have no qualms. Rachel Hartman is a phenomenal writer, and even though I was so disappointed by Seraphina's sequel, I can still appreciate what Hartman's merits as a writer. Seraphina was an amazing book to begin with, and even more so when you consider it was her debut work. It was really the one place she didn’t disappoint me with Shadow Scale, and where I don’t think she ever will.
Seraphina herself was another part of Shadow Scale that had me conflicted. I think Jannoula was a great choice of villain, and the flashbacks between her and Seraphina at the start of the book were some of the best parts. I love antagonists that bring a sympathetic, emotional component to the hero-villain dynamic. But I didn’t feel like Seraphina lived up to her character from the first book; actually, few characters did. Seraphina is strong and willful and brave, but she was none of that for me in Shadow Scale. Everything that made me love her in the first book seemed to disappear. There’s some part of Jannoula that’s good, but there’s a lot more of her that is bad, that started a war and has every intention of manipulating and killing as she pleases. Seraphina spends the entire book trying to save Jannoula, at the expense of thousands of life. She was ready to let Jannoula start a devastating war if it meant Jannoula did not have to die.
Seraphina spent so much of Shadow Scale attempting to absolve her own guilt without ever understanding that she was being selfish and righteous. I spent a lot time being frustrated by her, especially when this stupidity was swept under the rug. I wanted character growth, and the only place it came from was Glisselda. So much of the book did not seem to match up with Seraphina. A lot of the secondary characters I loved from Seraphina spent most of the book under Jannoula’s influence, so even they were robbed of the story. There was also very little conclusion to things that Hartman made matter to the reader, and things that were seemed awkward and wrong.
I think I may have had better things to say about Shadow Scale if it hadn’t ruined so much of Seraphina for me with it. I still can’t point to any one thing that ruined my reading experience, or at what point the story really failed for me. I’m so disappointed by how disappointed I was by Shadow Scale because I couldn’t have wanted to love it more.
I’m not even sure if I would have liked it more if I hadn’t been expecting so much.
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