Seressia Glass

Shadowchasers — (2010-2011) Publisher: Kira Solomon’s life is a delicate balancing act. By day she specializes in identifying and defusing ancient ceremonial magic objects. By night she’s a Shadowchaser — a bounty hunter in service to the Guardians of Light in the eternal struggle against the Shadow of Chaos. She resents her superiors in the Gilead Commission for allowing her previous handler to die, but there aren’t a lot of career choices for a woman who’s unable to touch another living thing without devastating consequences. Then she meets a man she can touch — a 4,000 year-old Nubian warrior. Problem is, she doesn’t know if he’s her salvation or destruction — especially since someone’s turning Atlanta upside down in search of a mystical blade. An Egyptian blade that happens to be four millennia old, sentient, and looking for its master. Kira’s not giving anything up without a fight, and when the gloves comes off, she’s always the last one standing.

Shadow Blade

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 and paragraph that otherwise have nothing to do with his physique.

It gets smoother from there, though. Glass immerses the reader in two intertwined plotlines: one externally driven, and one that takes place within Kira’s psyche. The “outer” plot is exciting adventure-story stuff. Comstock gives Kira an ancient Egyptian dagger rumored to possess tremendous occult power. Soon, Kira finds that the dagger is an artifact people would literally kill for. She is pursued by a demonic entity who lusts for the blade’s power, and by Khefar, a millennia-old Nubian warrior, who is the original owner of the dagger and wants it back.

The “inner” story, to me, is even more interesting. Kira has spent most of her life keeping people at a distance, both physically and emotionally. As Shadow Blade progresses, she becomes more trusting and more willing to accept help from her friends and allies. Meanwhile, she is struggling to maintain the balance of Light and Shadow in her soul and stay in the good graces of her patron goddess, Ma’at. Kira’s emotional and spiritual journey takes place alongside her physical battles, and raises the stakes in those battles tremendously.

I also have to commend Seressia Glass for the uniqueness of her mythology. How often do you get to read an urban fantasy based on the Egyptian pantheon, or have breakfast with Anansi the spider-god?

Shadow Blade comes to a satisfying close — no cliffhangers here — but also serves largely to introduce the cast and set the stage for further installments. There are plenty of plot hooks left to explore as the Shadowchasers series continues. —Kelly Lasiter

Shadow Chase

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.

And once it does get rolling, it’s a great deal of fun. We travel with Kira, Khefar, and friends to London, Cairo, Aswan, and an eerie alternate dimension, and Seressia Glass puts them through the physical and emotional wringer several times. In terms of the adventure aspect, the Egypt sections could have used a little more description to help “transport” the reader there, but nonetheless the story is enjoyable. We also get plenty of development on the romance front. Shadow Chase reminded me a bit of the GRAIL KEEPERS series Evelyn Vaughn wrote for Silhouette Bombshell several years ago, with its combination of archaeology, romance, goddess mysticism, and a strong heroine. If you liked those books, you will probably like the SHADOWCHASERS books too.

Shadow Chase would be a stronger novel if some of the talk and introspection were cut from the early chapters. The plot is a good one, but it takes an unusually long time to get there. —Kelly Lasiter

Shadow Fall

Shadow Fall finds 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 Ilona Andrews, Seressia Glass uses real-world hyena matriarchy as a jumping-off point for her werehyena society, yet the two authors use this common element to create two very different cultures. It’s always fun when an author can put a new spin on something. We also learn the identity of Kira’s mother — and it wasn’t who I thought!

My sticking point with the Shadowchasers series continues to be a quirk of Glass’s writing style. There’s a lot of over-explaining and repetition. For example, here’s a quote from page 26:

Khefar could touch her, and she him, without triggering her extrasense. There was no danger of reading his life’s history in every vivid detail; no danger of downloading every thought and emotion from this particular heartbeat all the way back to birth; no danger of draining his life force and leaving him in a coma; nothing to fear, only the exquisite sensations of the heat of his skin, the rough pads of his fingers, the press of his body against hers.

And from page 84:

Kira knew her ability was different, though — a souped-up-on-steroids version. She could read an object and a person with a single touch, essentially downloading their thoughts, emotions, and memories in the ultimate invasion of privacy. That download drained the person she touched, often with fatal consequences if she read too long or too deeply.

Sometimes over-explanations are in the dialogue, resulting in stilted speech. This is from a conversation between Kira and her lover, Khefar:

”No. Gilead’s got sweepers and Special Response Teams on standby. Sanchez herself will be here, since Gilead, under the auspices of its umbrella company, Light International, made a sizable donation to the arts and culture program this benefit showing is for. Like you said, it’ll be all right to forgo being a Shadowchaser for one night.”

In Shadow Fall, perhaps the most belabored topic is Kira’s worry over whether she’s going to be corrupted by her Shadow side. It’s a significant theme of the series, admittedly, but Kira spends tons of page time thinking about it and arguing about it with Khefar. A few hard-hitting scenes on this subject might have been more effective than bringing it up constantly.

However, I liked the advice given to Kira on this front at the end of Shadow Fall, and I hope she takes that advice and carries it into future books. Glass brings original ideas to urban fantasy; the Shadowchasers series just needs a bit less angst and a little more trust in the reader’s memory.
—Kelly Lasiter