Shroud of Shadow

Strands #3

by Gael Baudino

The lone elf survivor in the repressive age of The Inquisition, Natil encounters three things that keep her from departing this world--a young woman hearing voices, a vision of the future, and an Inquisitor. Original.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Science Fiction Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Elves, Speculative Fiction, Religion

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published November 1, 1993

About the author

Gael Baudino (born 1955) is a contemporary American fantasy author who also writes under the pseudonyms of Gael A. Kathryns, K.M. Tonso, and G.A. Kathryns.

Reviews

[Fred Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read others of the series, not in order and enjoy them. Baudino doesn't pull punches and she writes about the brutality of humans to other humans in a very graphic manner. Her characters are alive, vivid and she makes me care about them. I will continue to dip into her works in the coming years.

[Duncan Rice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stands alone just fine.

[Roxanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

I first read this series 20+ years ago but for some reason have been thinking of these books lately and was lucky enough to find this one and the fourth one at a used bookstore. Rereading it was, unfortunately, something of a slog: the plot dragged a bit and I wasn’t really interested in any of the male characters except Albrecht the bishop. I think I also have a lower threshold for torture now than I did when I was younger? And medieval characters with modern world views and sensibilities?

As long as this book was, I felt we didn’t get enough on Omelda. She started as an interesting character, but then got sidelined in favor of the wool cooperative, was horrifically abused, then died alone with no comfort. By the end, she felt more like a plot point than a character: a way to keep Natil from fading and get her into Jacob’s household, then a way to get her back to Furze. The character deserved better.

I also kept stumbling over the timelines. Jacob is supposed to be around 80, and Francis has to be in his late 40s. Jacob keeps talking about how his wife left three decades ago - specifically 30 years - when the children were young, but that can’t be right if Francis has adult sons! The more I think about it, the more it bothers me. Also, if the Lady created Elves at the dawn of time and they’ve been around billions of years, can they breathe underwater and how did they not get eaten by dinosaurs. For serious.

Best parts of this book were everything with Natil, and the dreams of Hadden and Wheat in the future.

I will definitely reread the fourth book, and will pick up the first two books if I happen to find them like I found these, but not planning to read this one again.

[Luna Corbden · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable book, and really good for processing the kinds of trauma women go through, with lots of content warnings for detailed scenes of torture and sexual assault. I did not read the previous books in this series, and it worked just fine as a stand-alone. I didn't feel confused about what was going on or like I missed any big reveals. It was good enough that I might try to track down the other books, or at least, perhaps, the next one. It's an older book (90s) and the author is clearly a feminist. This is a book that reveals the kinds of trauma women go through, and shows the strength that women use to get through it.

At times the beautiful prose immersed me, and I enjoyed the characters and watching their stories unfold. The ending was quite satisfying. It did suffer from making promises it didn't keep. For instance, it kept planting the seeds for an intricate political plot, but the political plot turns out to be quite strait-forward. Most other flaws were minor, and probably only the kind that a fellow writer would notice.

This was a good book for me to read while trying to get back into reading. I've been unable to read for fun since the brain fog and PTSD started many years ago, and this book was part of my morning routine to read a couple of pages a day. It worked quite well for that as the pacing fit this situation well and the plot was easy enough to follow with my brain fog and long gaps between reading when I failed to meet my goal. It's been hard to find books I can stay focused on, and this one worked great.

[Lucy Takeda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I kept reading because of Natil and a shred of hope. The previous two novels were pretty violent, and I found them a challenge to read. This one is massively gruesome, with an abundance of torture and rape. I’ll probably end up with nightmares.
Natil is rather like the Last Unicorn, searching the world to see if there are any others like her left in the world. The Free Cities, a bastion of hope and decency, have pretty much been destroyed by raiders and a determined Inquisition. There is a scattering of good folks left, but they are finding it difficult to combat the wickedness surrounding them.

[Beth (Bepi) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a hard book to trudge through. The story was incredibly slow and the characters were extremely off putting. It wasn't until about page 250 or so that I found a good beat and actually found it hard to put down. Strong finish though.

[Kelly · Rating 1 out of 5]

Natil is the last of the Elven race, and in this novel she takes a runaway nun, Omelda, under her wing during the time of the Inquisition. Natil's powers are mostly gone, except for her miraculous harp playing, which is the only thing that saves Omelda from suicide. Natil herself is suicidal, and wants nothing more than to crawl under a rock and cease to exist. Obsessed with this goal, she doesn't do much for Omelda except get the two of them indentured to a selfish rich man, his greedy sons, and his perverted grandsons. Much description of sadistic rape follows.

Natil keeps herself going because she has visions of Elves reawakening in the twentieth century—the only trouble is that these elves are this rather boring couple who spend all their time navel-gazing and talking about how groovy their new powers are. So anyway, they're the hope of the Elven race, and Natil goes on about her business, bemoaning her own lack of powers and still planning her departure from this world. Natil's self-pity blinds her to the much more dire plight of Omelda; I was sorely disappointed in Natil over this.

Eventually, all the major characters end up charged by the Inquisition. Description of nasty tortures follows. Some of the characters get a semi-happy ending, due to the fact that money conquers all, but the end suffered by one of the characters is absolutely pointless and depressing.

Overall, the book sunk me into a morass of despair while all the while making me want to throw up. I wanted to wash my brain out with soap afterward. (After I finished the book, I had to read some pages of something else before I could sleep.) Perhaps this is the effect Gael Baudino is trying to achieve. And yes, I know that these atrocities really happened to real people during those times. But there's no law saying I have to enjoy reading about it in detail. The scenes where Natil actually does something, for example when she plays the harp or when she stands up to the Inquisitor, are quite good, but you have to wade through hundreds of pages of gross-out to find them.

[Angela R. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Better than the 2nd book in the series, but not as good as the first. The inquisition was a scary time, and following Natil, the last elf, through this trying time proves a suspenseful read. I remember being so turned off by the 2nd book that I almost didn't read Shroud of Shadow, but I was glad that I did. The book comes to some resolution at the end making it seem like the final book in a trilogy, even though the author kept rigth on writing this series.

[Katy Lohman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Omelda is shadowed by the chant of the canonical hours forever playing in her head. Natil is shadowed by being the last Elf who has lost both her magic and her connection to Elthia. Albrecht is shadowed by Siegfried and his inquisitorial ambitions. Everyone is shadowed by the bloody hand if the Inquisition. This is a dark novel full of despair, and very little hope...but the character still manage to forge through.

Some go further than others.

[Tam · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sigh. I had managed to forget how much I hated this book in the decade that it sat on my shelf. The only redeeming feature of it is that the main character doesn't "speak" with an undecipherable accent, as in Maze of Moonlight. Oh, and the latin is roughly accurate. The first book in the series is decent, but they fall off rather precipitously.

[Graisi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written as part of this series, yet the most triggering.

Clearly cathartic on some level for the author to have written, yet I only got about halfway through this third reading of it.

The other books in the series are great, especially the first one.

For those who require trigger warnings for rapes (yes, plural), just read the first book.