Of Shadow and Sea

The Elder Empire: Shadow, Book 1

By: Will Wight

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

The Consultant’s Guild has served the Aurelian Empire for over 1,000 years, working in the darkness to hunt dissension and eliminate traitors.

Now, the Emperor is dead.

For Shera, an assassin in the employ of the Consultants, the Emperor’s death is the beginning of a nightmare. Powerful forces hunt the Heart of Nakothi, a cursed artifact that can raise a second Emperor...and corrupt him in the process.

But some desire power at any cost.

The Guild of Navigators, an infamous collection of swindlers and pirates, has been paid a fortune to secure the Heart. Their only lord is greed, their only loyalty to gold, and they would sell the Empire’s freedom for the promise of a quick coin.

In the shadows, a woman works to set the world free.

On the seas, a man seeks to raise a lunatic to lord over mankind.

Will you walk the shadows here with Shera? Or will you explore the seas with Calder, in the parallel novel Of Sea and Shadow?

©2014 Hidden Gnome Publishing (P)2019 Audible, Inc.

A sociopath with friends on the side

I enjoyed both Will Wight's story and the excellent narration performance of Emily Woo Zeller. Of particular note, Ms Zeller was able to pull off a good impersonation of male characters' timbre, something I've found difficult for many female narrators.

The story itself reminds me a bit of Mark Lawrence's Red Sister, Books of the Ancestor series but maybe even a bit darker in tone. Shera, as written, is a very interesting character. Ostensibly, she shows all the outward signs of being a psychopath when dispensing with her enemies but internally she is written as a more complex person than that, one who knows they lack the appearance of empathy but, by her actions, prefers not to kill her targets. Similar to Red Sister, she has bonded with two other companions and the author has written them such that they all have their own strengths and while Shera is the obvious MC, the other two are like her left and right arms when they encounter over-whelming odds.

The end of the novel suggests two paths the listener can take, continuing on with Shera's journey or moving to a parallel journey that focuses on Calden Marten's, her antagonist in this book. As of this writing, the audiobook version of her continued journey is not yet available so early listeners like myself will have to follow Calden Marten's path which, is not a bad thing; especially considering it is performed by one of my top-tier narrators, Travis Baldree.

As an aside, the last we left the Cradle series, there were allusions made that they were in a multiverse but with little details of what these these other realms consisted of. It does beg the question of whether the Elder Empire is a tangential realm to Cradle or completely unrelated. And since we're on the subject, what about the Cradle series?

I wonder

If I hadn’t listened to Of Sea and Shadow would I have enjoyed this more? Would I have identified less with those characters and more with these? Possibly. I just couldn’t get behind the Guild members. With an hour to go here I’m tempted to speed up to 1.75x just to finish and then continue the Sea and Shadow storyline.

A bit confusing, but very captivating.

This book has a lot of flashbacks. Most often, one chapter is present day, and the next is in the past. It takes some getting used to, but the more you unravel the time line, the more you get a sense of the actual struggles the characters face .

Decent but not Strong

The story was decent, but I rarely felt the draw to go back and continue the story. that made it take a good bit longer to finish than usual. The ending had some redeeming qualities that might help me continue, but I had a hard time getting through this book. I'd probably attribute it mostly to the pacing (scattered and light world building). Maybe of Sea and Shadow will build a more complete experience to built the future series on.

great book

i loved this book and can't wait to hear the next books and it's wonderful