Shadow Blade by Seressia Glass

In Shadow Blade, Seressia Glass creates a compelling urban-fantasy heroine, Kira Solomon, and kicks off what promises to be a distinctive kick-butt series.

For me, Shadow Blade got off to a bumpy start. There’s a lot of “telling” and exposition as Glass familiarizes the reader with her world and with Kira’s backstory. We learn that Kira can drain an ordinary human of vitality by touching them, which means she has to keep people at literal arm’s length. It’s a heartbreaking “gift” to have, but it’s mentioned more times than it needs to be. We learn that Kira’s mentor, Bernie Comstock, is like a father to her — and this, too, is repeated several times. Then there are a few random non sequiturs, like a description of the hero’s “honed runner’s build” smack dab in the middle of a sentence a... Read More

Shadow Chase by Seressia Glass

The back cover blurb for Shadow Chase promises an adventure story revolving around the Vessel of Nun, an Egyptian artifact that has gone missing and, unless restored to its proper place, will unleash a worldwide flood.

This storyline, however, doesn’t start until after the 100-page mark (though there is one brief hint that foreshadows part of it), and this is to the detriment of the book. In the early chapters, most of the page time is taken up with introspection, discussions, and arguments about the events that occurred in Shadow Blade and the issues these events raised. The same concerns are raised repeatedly. On the one hand, this could benefit readers who haven’t read Shadow Blade and are starting with this installment. But readers who did read the first book may be impatient for this book’s plot to get rolling. Read More

Shadow Fall by Seressia Glass

hadow Fallfinds Kira Solomon back in Atlanta, with new problems on her hands. A new Egypt exhibit has opened at the Georgia World Congress Center, and one of its displays recreates a piece of the Egyptian mythos that, perhaps, shouldn’t be messed with. A young werehyena asks Kira to witness a leadership challenge in that community. And Kira is having disturbing dreams about Set, the god of chaos. Perhaps worst of all, most of her support system is unavailable to her at the moment: Balm is incommunicado, Anansi is out of town, and Wynne and Zoo are becoming more distant from her.

Shadow Fall is paced better than book two, Shadow Chase; important events occur throughout the novel. The Egypt plotline is especially appealing to mythology geeks like me, though the hyena plotline is also interesting. Like Read More