Review: Shards of Time

Shards of Time by Lynn Flewelling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first thing you see starting a book is the cover. And for this particular book it's a huge advantage. I didn't check who was the cover artist for all the books in the series, only the first two and the last two, but judging by the style they finally found a suitable artist for the last four installments. And by the last book he (Michael Komarck) reached the perfection. He actually read the book, not just skipped through as the first artist, and did the cover according to the descriptions inside.

The second thing you see, when you open this book, is the map. Or rather maps. There is the usual one, showing us all the lands we know of from this series, but there is also a new one. The whole action in Shards of Time takes place on the Island of Kouros, so we got a map of it. The unusual bit is that this map has a scale, the first scale in the series. So it doesn't take a lot of math skills to measure the island, deduce the scale of the large map, and then remember all those travels by water and by land our heroes did in previous books. I did just that and placed a time estimation to each one according to the distance and the mode of transportation. The amazing thing is IT ALL CHECKS OUT! There are no one-day journies over one-week-worth of distance! I'm in mute admiration.

The book itself is incredebly fast-paced, whirling along from the very first page. I was half-way through the day I finished the previous one, Casket of Souls. Once again, it's more of an adventure, than a political puzzle. The pace doesn't slack for a minute (though I made myself to slow down, trying to savor the book), culminating in a messy battle (only one this time, I guess lesson learnt after The White Road). The battle may be a bit too melodramatic for my taste, and there were a few things that didn't make a lot of sense, logic or event-wise, but on the whole it was an excellent reading.

Now i'm in mourning, because it's the last Nightrunner book.

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