bbbecksi’s Reviews > The Shadow of What Was Lost > Status Update

I fucking hate wirr

If I have to read “companionable silence” in a sentence one more time I might just DNF this book

“The conversation moved to lighter topics” DAVIAN IS LITERALLY DEAD TO THEM this is so ridiculous.
The ONLY mourning wirr felt for Davian was literally “he turned forward again and swallowed a lump in his throat, forcing himself to finally admit the hard truth.” THATS ALL. Has the author never lost a loved one?? Ever???

So wirr learns Davian is dead and is happy to casually converse with aelric about aelric’s childhood, somebody he previously felt zero affection for. There’s literally 0 mourning over Davian. Oh well, right?
Also we saw exactly 1 interaction with wirr and the girl and suddenly they’re “close” and “anyone with eyes can see it” see what exactly? Because I, as the reader, didn’t fucking see it.

“Wirr felt a pang of sorrow as he did every time he thought of the school”
“Something felt…off”
“They fell into companionable silence”
“Davian nodded slowly”
“Wirr thought about how he’s a prince and life is hard”
“Everything in the scene points to something wicked being nearby, but it all felt…unsettling”

The excessive dialogue and cookie cutter characters make this a hard read. Too much infodumping, too much “I trust you just because” and too much “he’s keeping secrets from us”. yawn.

There’s like, way too much going on and at the same time nothing is going on, and I’m bored. Asha is boring, wirr being a prince is boring, Davian’s powers being solely the ability to tell if someone is lying - and only if they aren’t shielding, which is most of the time - is boring. All of these important middle aged characters are blurring together and the names are hard to follow.

There’s a lot of death in this book…