Shadows Return: The Nightrunner Series, Book 4 [Mass Market Paperback]

Think of your favorite scenes from the first three books - Alec proving worthy of his Black Radley bow, Seregil entering the snow-covered cave in the Dravnian village, Beka leading Urgazhi turma behind enemy lines, the Rhui'Auros mystics of Aurenen. Whatever they were, you won't find them here. Instead you get Chapter 39 in "Stalking Darkness," where Alec's being tortured in the hold of a ship, only here it goes on for a full half of the book.

The first three Nightrunner books are captivating and original, like a grittier Sherlock Holmes, with just the right touch of wonder and horror to the magic of the wizards. They're also dense, packed with captivating descriptions that never bog down, and laced with insight on swordplay, archery, and various espionage skills. Anyone seeking to write fine fantasy should check them out.

With this book, though, the difference is striking. For while the book's cover is gorgeous, inside it looks like a young adult novel, and worse, it reads like one.

First, there's clumsy lines like "Peering cautiously outside, he froze as he made out a line of figures outside." Every writer makes such slips, but an editor should've caught them. What really drags it down, though, are all the interior monologues. These long summaries of what everyone is feeling. "Alec was normally the most reasonable and easygoing of men; but on this one topic he always grew troubled, though he wouldn't say much about it. All Seregil would do was avoid the subject. He made no apologies for his past, but he hated causing Alec pain." And on and on, over and over again. In the earlier books you can hardly find such meandering, and always just a sentence here and there - not full pages of lovelorn ponderings.

And where is Seregil while Alec is imprisoned? Surely he's out sleuthing, tracking down Alec to rescue him. Nope, he's in another cell. So we go from Alec being groped while drugged to Seregil being groped while drugged and then back again. In the first Nightrunner book, Alec is miserable in a prison cell for just one page before he's busted out, but here all you get is Alec missing Seregil and Seregil missing Alec. "Oh tali! If you were killed, because of me..." and a hundred pages later Seregil's thinking the same thing, "limp and useless, trapped in a cell with no means of escape." Two heroes trapped in prison cells doesn't make for compelling fiction.

As for the characters, Seregil and Alec have gone from hardened, wise nightrunners with a strong bond to dopey-eyed lovers acting like amateurs. Like in an opening scene, when they're sneaking out of a mansion and Seregil looks back for Alec and says, "Hey! Where are you?" And Alec says, "Shhh! They'll hear you!" Real professional. Or when passing in front of the queen's cavalry, Micum tells Seregil, "Hush, someone will hear you!" He might as well have shouted, "He's talking bad about the queen!" Why not just have him change the subject, or make one of those hand signals that were so interesting in the earlier books? Besides that moment, Micum is the only one who acts like his old self, and those scenes are good, if still not up to the earlier books.

The dialogue, as well, is thin and clichéd, where it was previously one of the best parts of the series - witty, to the point, every scene holding its weight. So again, what's missing is the depth, the wonderful texture and realism of Flewelling's prose. (For a better look at the difference in style, check out a comparison I'll post in the Comments.)

I really hate to say all this, `cause I love the earlier books so, and Flewelling is a class act. I don't know what she was after here, but it's not a rewarding read.

Things do start to move at the end, though (even if what will happen in a battle scene is obvious before it begins), and there's also an enticing glimpse of the next book.

The Nightrunner Series has been a favorite of mine ever since the books first came out. That makes leaving this review really difficult for me, as I believe that Flewelling is a great author.

However, I hate to say it, but this book just doesn't live up to her previous work. As other reviewers have mentioned, there are a lot of little mistakes, such as what happened to Alec's father, various misspellings, and grammar issues, but these are small compared to the real issues.

Simply put this book is missing everything that made the previous books work. The sense of realism is gone, and a world that once seemed complete and full is now flat and empty feeling (someone mentioned a cardboard city). The same can be said for the characters. In the previous books I always got the impression that as much as we have seen of Alec and Seragil and the others, there was still more underneath. In this book they seemed to have been whittled down to their basic descriptions. Instead of real people they are as flat as the rest of world. In fact the whole book seemed to be lacking life, and character.

Lastly was the story. The idea didn't seem bad at first, but the execution was not so good. Honestly it seemed very contrived. I won't be specific as to which points I found especially troublesome, as that would be revealing spoilers, but let me just say that there are many places where the feel of the story is more like bad fan fiction than the normal type of work I had become used to seeing from Flewelling.

There were so many clichés that lead into seemingly contrived events, which read more like getting from point A to C via X (what and why?) than a real novel. There were plenty of occasions where the conclusions reached didn't match the action that took place, and the behavior exhibited did not seem in character or even remotely realistic.

As one other reviewer said, Flewelling's strong point had always been the ability to make a fantasy world seem logical and realistic. It was easy to suspend disbelief when reading Flewelling because her world, and her characters and their situations were all believable. When reading this book I never once was able to reach that point.

To say I was disappointed in this book is an understatement. Honestly, it made me wonder if my appreciation of the other books was due to some type of sentimentality instead of an actual representation of their quality. I am not sure if I will be purchasing the next books in this series, but perhaps I will. I just hope that Flewelling will be able to recapture the magic that seems to have been lost in this one.

I want to preface this review by saying that I love the first three Nightrunner books, and I enjoyed the Tamir triad very much. As other people have stated, if you liked the first three then you should get the fourth one (if only for completeness). That said, I would not agree with the sentiment that if you liked the first three, then you'll love this one too. I was ecstatic when I first read on the author's livejournal that she was writing a new book. When I read about a month before the release of Shadows Return that she had already begun writing the fifth book, The White Road, I should have been suspicious. Again, as previous reviewers have mentioned, Shadows Return is short. It also ends rather loosely, leading me to believe that perhaps at one time Shadows Return and The White Road were supposed to be one long novel. I wish that they had done that because Shadows Return is a somewhat unsatisfying read. I re-read the first three in the days leading up to the release of the fourth, and each one took me two or three days to read. I read this book in one sitting, not necessarily because I couldn't put it down, but because I had needlessly cleared two days of any non-reading activities. It seems like nit-picking to argue over length (especially when the book is short given the author, not the genre), but it's a little frustrating to wait several years for a book that barely takes an afternoon to read, then find out that the next one (essentially Shadows Return: Part 2) is coming out next year.

My disappointment over the length leads me into my next issue- this is a very simple book. The text and spacing are very large compared to the last three books. When I picked up my pre-ordered copy I stood in line to pay and just studied the cover (which is gorgeous, by the way). When I finally cracked it open, after I got home, I wondered who had put a young adult book inside my new Nightrunner novel. Now that I think of it, that might be a good way to look at this new book- it's sort of like a young adult version of the books we've come to love. Characters that used to act in unique and varied ways based on specific background and growth now have just three moods (Alec- angry, jealous, naive. Seregil- vengeful, forgiving, conflicted) for easy-to-understand characterization. Side characters and past events are given tantalizing mention and then shoved aside (bad news for Beka-lovers such as myself). Lynn Flewelling has an excellent voice in her writing, and it was so frustrating reading a book that felt like it had been put through a simplification machine. Shadows Return reads like the first three books, but with shorter sentences and chapters, and no-frills vocabulary. As an english major, I love coming across a word I've never seen before and going to look it up. That never even came close to happening in this book. The last young adult characteristic that I noted was the frequent reminders of motivations stemming from the first three books. First off, most people reading Shadows Return will have already read the first three and won't need reminders of big events. Second, you can explain the first time a character does x that he's doing it because of y- you don't have to tell us every time he does x.

My last complaints have to do with the many errors in spelling/continuity present in this fourth installment. Any book will have a few errors in its first printing, but there are quite a few mistakes in Shadows Return. Not just grammar and punctuation, but names, events, and Aurenfaie words are misspelled or suddenly different. Remember when Alec's father was tortured to death in Asengai's dungeon? Hopefully you don't because it didn't actually happen. Maybe in an early draft of the first book Amasa was with Alec in the dungeon, but by now shouldn't the author and publisher know which version they went with? The good part about these errors is that they can be fixed in later editions, but those of us with first editions are out of luck.

The reason I gave Shadows Return three stars is because there are some genuinely fun and exciting parts. There is a fantastic twist in the novel that I didn't expect at all, and which led to some very interesting passages. A newly introduced character (I'll try not to give anything specific away) does have slight overtones of a deus ex machina, but is extremely interesting nevertheless. I trust enough in Lynn Flewelling's writing ability that I believe The White Road will alleviate the concerns that usually go along with deus ex machina plot devices (i.e. nobody can die, nobody can lose). Ultimately that's why I'm writing this review- the problems present in Shadows Return are ones that are easily solved, and it's not too late for The White Road to be the triumphant Nightrunner sequel that we've all been waiting for.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 56 reviews  4.2 out of 5 stars