SHADOWBLADE

released OUT NOW! 432 pages | Paperback/ebook/ audiobook

Author anna Kashina Publisher angry robot As a romance, Shadowblade isn’t particularly romantic, and as a fantasy it isn’t fantastic either. The setting, all deserts and schools of scholars and assassins and vicious emperors and queens, is vaguely Arabian Nights, which does at least set it apart from the Eurocentric majority of Western fantasy, but nothing that happens in the plot is unexpected, and you’ll spot the villain of the piece early on.

It’s tempting to blame that on the romance aspect of the novel, as romance seems to be a genre where certain things are expected (not least that two people can meet, instantly experience a lust so powerful it translates into an understanding of the other person’s personality, then still feel exactly the same three years later), but there are only two sex scenes in the novel, so it doesn’t exactly deliver on that front either. The romantic leads, a newly-trained “Shadowblade” impersonating a long-lost princess, and another of her profession, are as dull as dishwater; Machiavellian scholars Dal Gassan and Dal Mehtab are more interesting, but their actions and motivations are barely explored apart from where they touch on the heroine’s life.

It’s a shame, as there’s some interesting world building being done here, but everything suffocates under a blanket of by-the-numbers passion.