Reign of Shadows by Sophie Jordan
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Seventeen years ago, an eclipse cloaked the kingdom of Relhok in perpetual darkness. In the chaos, an evil chancellor murdered the king and queen and seized their throne. Luna, Relhok’s lost princess, has been hiding in a tower ever since. Luna’s survival depends on the world believing she is dead.
But that doesn’t stop Luna from wanting more. When she meets Fowler, a mysterious archer braving the woods outside her tower, Luna is drawn to him despite the risk. When the tower is attacked, Luna and Fowler escape together. But this world of darkness is more treacherous than Luna ever realized.
With every threat stacked against them, Luna and Fowler find solace in each other. But with secrets still unspoken between them, falling in love might be their most dangerous journey yet.
With lush writing and a star–crossed romance, Reign of Shadowsis Sophie Jordan at her best.
Back in the day, I remember really enjoying Sophie Jordan’s book series that took a refreshing take on dragons and was some of the finest YA literature I read. It was funny, unique, and was super interesting. When I see a few bloggers that I follow really enjoying this book with a super pretty cover and mentioning the word, fairytale, I was all in. However, a few things combined together to make me and this book experience a total mess.
I had no clue what this book was about when I went into it. However, once I started, I got some major Rapunzel vibes. Only this was no Rapunzel story – its’ dark, twisty, and super creepy. I did love this kind of odd and unique take on a fairytale world. Usually a world that is set in a fairytale land is full of happy birds chirps, rainbows, and green, lush forests. Instead, this land was set in this darkened world full of cannibal-like dwellers, giant beasties in the form of massive bats, a land only allowed a few minutes of partial light, and more. I was so intrigued, and I give Jordan so much props for creating a haunting, unique world.
With this lush world, I wanted more of a lush, dark writing. I think Jordan was definitely going for that, and personally, at times, it felt like it was trying way too hard. Some of the descriptions felt way too forced and I was just like, oh dear, that does not sound right. It really broke up the flow for me. When Jordan wasn’t describing, though, it was great, and her truly great writing abilities shown.
One of the other issues I had was with our two leads. I wasn’t aware going into the novel about Luna’s *somewhat spoiler: blindness*. I was super excited to discover this, since there are so few books with leads with this. For the most part, I thought that Jordan did a good job with representing. Then I felt that there became a few issues with her representation. It felt like Luna was far too…well, she was suffering from special girl syndrome. She could understand and guess at just about anything and anyone that walked her way – she knew how far away they were, who it was exactly (and guessing what kind of physique they were), she knew how to get up and down a tree after never doing it before. And she could quietly follow people behind for exceedingly long periods of time without them knowing? It felt like everything was far too easy for her, and at the end, *SPOILER: she decided to go off on her own in a forest she had never been in before with the evil dwellers and some kind of wolf friend? And then she just happened to know Fowler was crashing through??*
Then I had the issue with Fowler. I didn’t feel much of anything from him. I really didn’t like him, and he was all angsty all the time. I wasn’t feeling him at all. He just felt like a shell of the broody, antihero I was supposed to fall in love with, but I felt nothing for him, his backstory, or his characterization.
Then we have the instalove. I’m not going to lie, sometimes I find that I do enjoy instalove. If it’s well done, I can totally forgive it. However, this was one of the cases that the instalove super bothered me. In most of the interactions between Luna and Fowler, Fowler was rude and jerky to her. Then they’re pushed together in the situation and next thing I know, they’re totally swooning over reach other in the most cliche and predictable ways. I totally might have snapchatted my friend a lot of their interactions with captions such as, “what am I reading now???” I didn’t like Fowler let alone like him with Luna, and in the back part of the story, it seemed like it was just focusing on them.
I really do like Merida so much more than this book.
The plot did have a few surprises, but in the end, it was super predictable and I could pinpoint quite a few things that were going to happen. The world building also confused me at times. I wanted to know more about the eclipse and what happened before with it but we only got vague mentions. While I thought the dwellers were cool and interesting, I also didn’t fully understand what they were and how they came to be. Where they people? Monsters? Something in between? I knew we had to be afraid of them, but I was confused by them. There were a few things I would have loved a lot more descriptions and explanations behind, but it was brushed over.
Somehow, I still managed to binge read this all (sheer determination?). There were some interesting parts, but I found a lot of parts that I was left confused, irritated, and in disbelief. This book was odd, and some of it worked and some of it didn’t quite for me. It got bogged down by instalove, characterization I found poor, and somewhat confusing writing at times. The premise was so solid and had quite a bit of potential, but I failed to connect with it. 1 crown for me, and a Merida rating!
