Shadows: Sapphire Smyth & The Shadow Five # 1 by RJ Furness is the first in a series about shadows. I had just added The Book of M by Peng Shepherd at the time when The WriteReads‘ start gathering bookbloggers for the blog tour for this book. If you have read The Book of M or my thoughts on it (Part 1 and Part 2), you will know it’s also about shadows. New views of an object add new insights and that’s why today, as part of my stop on the blog tour, I’ll sharing my thoughts on Shadows, the book and the concept in books I have read.
Let’s take a quick look at the synopsis before we dive in.
Have you ever seen something you can’t explain? Did it vanish as fast as it appeared? Perhaps that thing you saw was lurking in the shadows, and you caught a glimpse of it before it went back into hiding. There’s a good chance, of course, that the thing you saw simply emerged from your imagination.
Or maybe, just maybe, it didn’t…
Sapphire Smyth is no stranger to rejection. When she was only a baby, her father abandoned her after her mother died. Since then, Sapphire has never felt like she belonged anywhere, or with anyone. To make things worse, her foster carers have now turned their back on her – on her eighteenth birthday. After living with them throughout her childhood, Sapphire has to find a new home. Is it any wonder she finds it hard to trust people?
Abandoned by the people she called family, Sapphire is alone and searching for some meaning in her life. Except that meaning has already come looking for her. When she discovers mysterious creatures lurking in the shadows, Sapphire soon realises that her fate is unlike anything she had ever imagined.
The Short Take – From Goodreads
Shadows explores the interesting concept of a shadow world where some special people in our world are able to interact with these shadow creatures. Written in bit-sized novellas, this book is the first to the Sapphire Smyth & The Shadow Five series. I found parts of the book eerie and haunting. Sapphire has just turned 18 years of age and now she is on her own in this world. With her decreased mother’s bracelet, she doesn’t quite know what is happening to the things around her.
Though fast-paced and only covering a night, there is a lot happening in this story, causing more confusion with the weak characters and world building. It does leave some curiosity about what happens next in part 2.
The Long Take – Themes for Thought
This book added to my mental map about shadows, while making me think deeply about character development and why the first book of any series is crucial in setting the foundations for any storyline.
On Shadows
In Shadows, some people have the ability to interact with creatures who live in the shadows. Using ornaments like bangles, they may be able to gather these creatures and use them. The synopsis of the book paints a number of possible scenarios.
Through the storyline we meet Sapphire, who is one of the people who can interact with shadows, but she does not know it yet. As the story progresses, she starts to notice these things that she can call upon, and at one point, a fox like the one of the cover of the book, appears to give her company. At another point, she has to use these shadows to defend herself.
The novella gave me a glimpse of what the shadows can do but their presence was already limited in the storyline and the explanations offered by some of the characters only added to my confusion. I’m sure the following parts will help solidify the premise.
On the Characters
Sapphire has turned eighteen and left her foster family. They do not want her. The novella is about this pivotal night, of the people Sapphire encounters, feelings of betrayal and more. My bookblogger friend, Noly, and I were discussing this book and agreed that we were expecting the age group of the protagonist to be different. She was expecting someone younger. I think the eeriness of the story would have been portrayed better with a younger child. For me, I thought Sapphire’s actions were too immature for an eighteen year old, and would have liked to see a younger child or an older main character.
But I wonder if me saying the above is partly because I do not know Sapphire well from this 100-page novella, and in the time I have known her, she has not been a very good central character. She has a constant run of bad luck, coming across bullies, and getting in trouble. Rather than taking the help that is offered, she wants to be out on her own in the middle of the night and does not listen to her friend, Ben, at all. She has no plan whatsoever.
Ben is no better, to be honest. The conversations between him and his sister are so cryptic! And all this brings me to, my thoughts…
On Shadows as a Serial Novel
Writing a novel is no easy task. Writing a series is no easier, especially when it comes to fantasy. With an interesting concept and quite a hook at the beginning, Shadows would truly have benefitted, in my mind, in creating well-rounded characters with some depth. With that, I suspect, the novella would have been longer and so would have been the serial. I’m curious to know what happens in the second part, but it makes me wonder if the novella could have ended at a less mysterious place and instead built the characters more concretely, would I have been more open to trying this format again? Because at this point, based on this first part of the serial, I’m not quite feeling like trying out another serial again.
** Shadows: Sapphire Smyth & The Shadow Five # 1 is now out in stores. **
Amazon Kindle (available on Kindle Unlimited)
I am thankful to The WriteReads and the author, for providing me a complimentary copy of the book as part of the blog tour, in exchange for an honest review. Be sure to visit other blogs that are discussing the book. 🙂
Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more book thoughts on Armed with A Book! Check out my interview with RJ below!
Cover image: Photo by Jeremy Perkins on Unsplash
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