I was offered a chance to read this book via Twitter by Ms. Zantow and, of course, I never turn down a chance to read a free book, so she sent it to me and here we are. The plot is as follows:
"The moon has not changed in the fifty years of the dark lord Magna’s rule—but everything else has.
All too often, the servants of Dark Overlords are dispatched with a lazy flick of the hero's sword. But in Shadowing, the job benefits of fire, mayhem, and shapeshifting almost make up for it. In between burning down villages, the minion's primary directive is taking out heroes. When a man in golden armor and his faithful companions sneak across the border on a quest to assassinate the Dark Lord Magna, long live the Magna, it's up to the Shadows to cut his quest short. As always, things do not go quite according to plan, and one henchman ends up lone-wolfing it across the permafrost lands, following the stench of valor.
A story of sword and sorcery, tooth and claw, and wyvern wing."
Shadowing is a true fantasy epic, complete with Heroes, elves, swords, Dark Overlords, shape shifters, etc.... which, taken all together, I thought would work for me but, as it turns out, it didn't for whatever reason. I know the age old adage that you can't please everyone but I really WANTED to like this book but it just didn't hit me like I hoped that it would, which is not a knock on Kat or her story telling abilities per se.
My problem was/is that I couldn't get into the book at all, even at a short 83 pages. Even at such a short amount of pages it took me a while to finish it as I kept putting it down and then picking it back up later and I found myself actually wanting it to end just so that I would be done with it. When I did finish it I had a hard time telling my wife what the story was about when she asked because it really made no impression on me.
As I said, no one likes all books and this happened to be one that I really didn't like for whatever reason. Will you like it? It's a good possibility. Would I give Ms. Zantow's next work a shot? Most definitely as, being a writer myself, I know how difficult it is to to even START a book so if someone takes the time to write something then I owe it to them to take the time to read it. So, check the book out and judge it for yourself because books, like art and music, are in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone likes Thriller and it's the top selling album of all time. I didn't like Avatar and it's the top grossing movie ever!
4 out of 10 stars.
Find the book HERE and check it out - only $.99 on the Kindle.