Intro

Elders, magical intent, chimeras, readers, Soulbound, modified humans, powerful artifacts, and assassins, oh my! In these books filled with all kinds of magical and fantastical elements, the Aurelian empire is in turmoil. Several years after the death of the seemingly immortal emperor, events are unfolding which promise to shake the empire to its core. Calder Martin, a Navigator captain, and Shera, an assassin in the Consultants guild, end up on opposite sides of the emerging conflict. Should you read the tale of the swashbuckling Calder, or should you read the tale of the deadly Shera? Or should you explore the full scope of the story and read both? What is going to happen when a world-wide empire has lost its core?

I found Of Sea and Shadow (hereafter Sea) on sale on Audible for a daily deal and read it first in audiobook format. Soon after that, I picked up Of Shadow and Sea (hereafter Shadow) in both Kindle and audio versions and switched between the two formats. As a quick aside, I can give good reviews for both audiobooks, but I did find the range of voices in Sea to be better than in Shadow where that narrator struggled to distinguish some of the female voices from each other.

Sea and Shadow were written by Will Wight (author’s website and Amazon page with his other books) and released on the same day, December 30, 2014. The books are both medium-length with Sea being 428 pages long and Shadow being 407 pages. These books are written in a really unique format; each is the first book in two separate trilogies that cover the same large-scale events from opposing viewpoints. Since they are written as complementary stories, I will review them together with some comparison, contrast, and reading order suggestions. I read Sea first which may have colored my interpretation and review, but I will try to be as accurate in my review as possible.

Read on for a detailed breakdown, or click here to jump to the conclusion.

“’Intent’ is what we call the power of focused will that all humans possess. If you use an object, you invest that object with your Intent. This, in turn, makes your tool more effective.

We have recognized these effects since ancient times, but only now are we learning to turn these principles to our own ends.

I believe the military applications are obvious”

Plot

Sea and Shadow both follow a plot pattern where the chapters alternate between the main characters’ past and their present. In the past, the stories show the development of the characters and their progress towards obtaining the positions each holds in their respective guilds. In the present, the stories follow their interactions with “The Heart of Nakothi”, a powerful magic artifact and their reactions to the implications it has for the empire.

While I thought the past sections were interesting and entertaining, I do not think they did much to provide any cohesive plot points. They were excellent for fleshing out the characters and their motivations, but the stories seemed a little disjointed. On a plot basis, I would rate the past section as being just “okay” while I would rate them highly for worldbuilding and character development.

The plotlines in the present are a bit more cohesive, but they still have that feeling of being a little disjointed rather than telling one larger story arc. They have the feeling of “this thing happened so the characters did this in response” rather than telling a story leading to a single payoff at the end. I thought this was more pronounced in Shadow with Sea having a little bit more cohesive of a plotline; Calder had a couple specific outcomes he was looking to accomplish while Shera seemed to move from task to task.

To temper the criticisms above, I want to point out that these books are the first in a trilogy. They actually do fill that role well with the plot lines becoming more cohesive by the end of each book; I got the impression that these books were intended more to set up the remaining books than to stand on their own. Both Sea and Shadow really pick up the pace near the end of the book and finish on notes that deepen the plot, explain why the characters are being pushed into the scenarios they are in, and make me excited to see where it goes in the respective second books.

Another way I want to temper the critiques is to call out the compelling uniqueness of having the same conflict told from opposing viewpoints with neither side being a clear villain. These books do a great job of showing how people on multiple sides of a conflict/disagreement can all have noble motivations while still disagreeing strongly. The plotlines in both books may be disjointed at times, but they do a great job telling this overall story of people struggling to find the right path and finding different solutions.

Worldbuilding/Series Connection

I consider the worldbuilding in these books to be both great and frustrating. I will explain first why it is great and then swing around to the frustrating bit. The greatness comes from the sheer depth of the world. The world has multiple classes of magical creatures/entities (chimera, Elders, elderspawn) and several types of magic (intent, artifacts, alchemy, soulbinding) with each interacting with and affecting other types of magic.

The world also has some depth of history and complex interactions between political factions. Since the fall of the emperor, the empire has largely been ruled over by the various guilds that formed the emperor’s bureaucratic system. The guilds feel unique with distinct motivations and goals, and their differing goals drive the plot throughout. Both books do a good job overall of making a world that is intriguing and complex. Wight also leaves enough questions about the world open that I want to read on in the series to explore everything further.

The frustrating bit with the worldbuilding is that Wight will sometimes just throw you into all of this complexity and then not explain the things he is talking about until later in the book. If you are an experienced fantasy reader, the way he throws you in the deep end will probably be no issue for you. A good comparison is the way Brandon Sanderson sometimes starts his books by showing you a scene of the magic being used but does not explain the magic until much later in the book. If you are inexperienced in reading fantasy, you may get frustrated with how many questions are left open until much later in the books.

If you want a gentler intro to the worldbuilding, I suggest starting with Shadow because it does not bring up as many concepts as early. I also felt that he gave a few more explainers throughout Shadow than he gave in Sea. Either way, you are going to end up learning a lot about this complex world and be ready to dive into books 2 and 3 in the respective series by the time you finish these first books.

Characters

For me, the characters were a mixed bag. I connected much more quickly with the characters in Sea than with the characters in Shadow. In Sea, Calder is the primary character with his crew forming the rest of the core cast. Calder was fairly well realized with some believable motivations and some humorous personality traits. His crew also has some pretty unique personalities. I particularly had a lot of fun reading the boisterous Urzaia Woodsman. My main critique for the characters in this book is that most of them do not have a ton of growth through the book. Who they are at the end is roughly the same as who they are at the beginning.

I found the characters in Shadow to be a bit more wooden. Especially after reading the funnier characters in Calder’s crew, reading the moodier, more serious characters in Shera’s crew was a bit of a shock. I also did not think Shera or her companion, Meia, showed much personal growth through the book with their character arcs being a bit flat. The third member of their crew, Lucan, was the most intriguing by far, and he does show some interesting traits for an assassin (such as a strong preference for pacifism).

Similarly to the plot development, I think the character arcs will improve and be more defined as the series progresses. By the end, the characters are more established and start to make progress in personal growth and change. I did not care much about most of the characters in Shadow in the beginning and middle, but I did see myself getting more intrigued with their storylines as the book started reaching its end.

Prose

The prose in the books is one of the strong points. Wight uses vivid, descriptive language through both books and does a great job painting a picture of all of the myriad magical beings and events in his books. For the most part, the characters’ voices are distinct enough in the way they are written that I could easily distinguish which character was talking at any given moment. The only time that I thought the prose was muddled was with Shera’s and Meia’s voices. They were sometimes difficult to tell apart from one another.

Conclusion

While writing this review, I found myself conflicted. I wrote lots of critiques, yet I remember enjoying my time in the books. I picked up Sea on a whim and was impressed enough at the end that I bought Shadow and committed myself fully to two trilogies. Though both have some flaws with the plot structure and character development, the excellent worldbuilding, florid prose, and sheer fun of some of the characters compensate for those minor flaws. Based on some events at the end of the books, I fully expect the issues I had with the occasionally disjointed plot and the lack of character development to be addressed through the remainder of the series and lead to a great payoff at the end.

Watch for my review of the second books in the series in the coming months!

You should read this if …

• You like a more complicated narrative around conflicts rather than a simple black and white view of good and evil
• You like having lots and lots of magical variation to explore
• You like pirate or assassin tales. Sea is pretty much about a pirate crew, and Shadow is about the empire’s best assassins