Review: Circle of Shadows

Circle Of Shadows 

Rating: 3.5/5

Buy or Borrow: Buy

Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher! 

Sora can move as silently as a ghost and hurl throwing stars with lethal accuracy. Her gemina, Daemon, can win any physical fight blindfolded and with an arm tied behind his back. They are apprentice warriors of the Society of Taigas—marked by the gods to be trained in magic and the fighting arts to protect the kingdom of Kichona.

As their graduation approaches, Sora and Daemon look forward to proving themselves worthy of belonging to the elite group—but in a kingdom free of violence since the Blood Rift Rebellion many years ago, it’s been difficult to make their mark. So when Sora and Daemon encounter a strange camp of mysterious soldiers while on a standard scouting mission, they decide the only thing to do to help their kingdom is to infiltrate the group.Taking this risk will change Sora’s life forever—and lead her on a mission of deception that may fool everyone she’s ever loved. 

It's taken me a while to sort this review out because I wasn't sure how I felt about the book when I finished it. It's one of my most anticipated reads of the year and I so badly wanted to give this 5 stars...but I just feel disappointed with it. In my mind...it wasn't as good as The Crown's Game and it's not without it's flaws. 

Feel free to check out my book discussion video of the book for a more in depth look at it, there's a spoiler free review section as well as a spoiler section: 

What I will say is that the opening chapter introduces you to the main characters well and fills you in on what happened in the world to lead us to this point with an action packed display that serves to introduce us to the magic system. We find out all the things we need to know in the beginning in an interesting way that piques your interest rather than info dumping and we swiftly get on with the story. 

Sora is an enjoyable main character, even if she's one of those characters that's just good at everything she interestingly doesn't utilise her potential and is a troublemaker. Her character took an interesting route and made for an interesting narrative. Her Gemina Daemon has mysterious origins and I had suspicions about him from the beginning, I turned out to be wrong which was a nice surprise. He's luckily immune to the villain's power, and he surprised me by being bad at magic, I liked the fact he was more of the hero of the book for a chunk than Sora. The Gemina bond did remind me a little bit of Parabatai, with the not being allowed to be together and in love, and the bonding and so on, but with this bond they feel each other's emotions. 

We have an interesting supporting cast in Fairy and Broomstick, I'd have liked to see more of them as their POV's when we had them where very brief and it made it hard to get attached to them to the extent I sometimes thought they where there just to keep you updated on stuff back in the Citadel or with the Council. Empress Aki seemed quite...quiet in the beginning and I was surprised she'd pulled off what she did. However, she did start to change my mind and I did come to like her as she realised the problems with the Council and was willing to change the old ways to newer ways. I'm actually hoping to get to see more of her and for her to get a chance to shine. There's also Virtuoso who surprised me multiple times, even if I wanted to smack her one more than once, I did understand where she was coming from. I was also intrigued by Prince Gin because he seemed like a morally grey character that might still have some good in him...but we didn't spend enough time in his POV to get to know him well enough and by the end of the book he was just the villain. 

I was fascinated by the magic system the Taiga's use, with the various different animal aspects, and then we had the magic system the Ryuu use that's more about seeing magic and getting it to do whatever you want with your mind and depending on certain conditions each Ryuu can do different things. It was less restrictive, and an interesting contrast to the Taiga's magic. 

The world was allegedly inspired by Feudal Japan according to the back of the arc I have, but I'm not sure I really saw that. Unless you're going off of the throwing stars, a couple of names and the ninja feel to the Taigas. I was intrigued by the way it was set out and it was definitely imaginative with some fun twists, like the actual goddess we got to meet! But I just couldn't pin down the worlds cultural inspiration at all. 

I liked the mythology that we came across in the book, and hearing about the different legends and tales and I would love to see more of that though! We had gods, goddesses, magic and science all combined, an academy for warriors and it did suck me in. I am intrigued enough that I had a tonne of questions after the ending of the book, I'm looking forward to seeing Sora overcome everything that's happened, because we end on quite a bleak note and she's quite downtrodden. 

The pace was also an issue for me, it's steady, which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem and I did like the focus on sisterly bonding and getting to grips with everything at the beginning but towards the middle it was getting quite slow. Things do build up and get faster towards the end but 

On to the things I didn't particularly like about this book, starting with the pace. It started out great, it really did, I was intrigued and so ready to binge read this but towards the middle it started to get very steady. Things didn't seem to progress much and then towards the end things started to rush a bit. Alongside the pace, I also had an issue with the point of view switching and switching to POV's that I didn't feel were necessary. Some of them didn't seem to contribute much to the story, and for Fairy and Broomstick for example, it seemed a bit too obvious to me that they were there just to show us what was happening at the Capital. We switched so much and their POVS were so few that it didn't give me a chance to get to know them as much as I would have liked so I had a hard time connecting to them. 

I was also disappointed with Prince Gin's POV which I address properly in the spoiler section of my video. I was just expecting him to be more fleshed out and to delve in to his character more from the teasing of him in the first part of the book but I ended up being disappointed as he just ended up being the bad guy with nothing more to him. 

I also feel like some things were a bit too convenient, some things happened too fast, and I do realise this could just be my problem with the book because it could be meant for a younger audience than I actually thought it was. I'm just disappointed because of how excited I was for this book and rather than raving about it, I finished the book feeling...uneasy. 

Perhaps one of my biggest issues with this book though is the romance and this is a hardcore spoiler so I'm going to talk about the basics of it rather than explaining it in too much detail. Again, all the details are in my video if you want to check the spoiler section. I was loving that he was the one with all the feelings, and I was so excited to see Sora develop her feelings for him and have them have to overcome the obstacle of not being allowed to be together but that was shot down by the end of the book. 

Seemingly out of nowhere, to me at least, the romance that had been going in one direction, did a complete and utter 180 and I am really not a fan of this love triangle that has suddenly sprung up. Not least because I'm not particularly loving the fact that it started with one character making a move on another minutes after they'd been cured from being drugged and having hallucinations and so on. I love a good love triangle if it's done well, but this one? I'm not a fan. 

While there's a lot I did love about this book, certain characters, the mythology and lore, the imaginative world, the action scenes, the intrigue, the fact they weren't starting a rebellion for once but trying to put an end to one and so on. There are also a few issues I had with it, lack of connection to characters I was supposed to care about, some pointless POV changes that aren't consistent enough to let you connect with the characters, teasing about Gin and teasing about Sora and Daemon, a love triangle that I feel came out of nowhere and had an unpleasant start to it. 

I do want to see what happens next, I'm so here for Sora making a comeback and Daemon figuring out his past and powers, I just feel like this initial book could have done with a bit of tweaking and polishing before it was released.