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Plague of Shadows  By  cover art

Plague of Shadows

By: Michael Wisehart
Narrated by: Tim Gerard Reynolds
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Publisher's summary

As magic’s influence spreads across the five kingdoms, the White Tower’s reach extends with it.

No place is left untouched.

In his quest for vengeance against the witch Mangora, Ty stumbles across a curious book he believes might help. But its pages hold a dark secret that threatens to unravel everything his family and friends have been fighting for. The more he reads, the more addicted he becomes to the knowledge it offers....

With no memory of who he is or where he came from, Ayrion finds himself traveling with a pair Rhivanni tinkers as they head east toward Sidara. Then a plea for help from a young rover boy leads them into the middle of a horrific bloodbath against an enemy no one has seen in over a thousand years. If they aren’t stopped, these creatures will spread across Aldor, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake....

As the first prisoner to escape the clutches of the White Tower, Ferrin’s only concern is reaching his sister, Myriah, before the Black Watch catches him. Joined by Rae, her daughter, Suri, and a former captain in the Black Watch, the small band makes their way north, hoping to keep ahead of the white riders. Little do they know who has been sent to track them down....

Meanwhile, Kira and the Warren underground continue their search for Reevie as they attempt to discover the reason behind the strange disappearances in Aramoor. However, the answers they seek are more disturbing than anything they could have imagined....

©2019 Michael Wisehart (P)2019 Podium Publishing

What listeners say about Plague of Shadows

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Bittersweet

The narration from Reynolds is always acceptable so let's just move to the story. I wanted this story to move forward since its been nearly 2 years. It unfortunately spread out instead of progressing. Ferrin is pretty much in the exact same predicament at the end as he was in the beginning. That goes for almost all of the characters. The biggest problems for me are that apparently no law enforcement is ever available. There are no city watch or soldiers anywhere; no garrisons for days in settled kingdoms to the point that a conflict can rage for over a week and noone has gone for reinforcements or to even try to get help from the authority in the area. Dont get me started on Ty. Instead of actually doing something he is basically just used to annoy the reader by making every "teen" ,aka dumb, decision the author can think of. This book really dampened my expectations for every character.
I get the feeling the real story is still being spun and this was just the author looking for where to go and I wouldn't mind if this was a blog or something else to keep people informed. This as a book...that they charged full price for and the story barely moved. It moved so little that if you cut out everything between each persons first chapter and their last chapter the only person that seems like they did anything is the guy who lost his memory. Wait for the next one.

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14 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Decent but rushed

This book was hard for me to finish. I enjoyed the previous book's but this one did not have the same depth, either that or the characters didn't have much depth in the beginning and I'm just now realizing it? Either way, the villains were all loathsome and evil to the core. The heroes were all perfect. No one had flaws, except maybe Ty, but instead of flaws he was an irredeemable idiot. It's rough because there are a lot of interesting ideas and content. They were simply hampered by a lack of realism and thought. The editor did no favors to the writer.

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9 people found this helpful

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Lacking

Disappointing second instalment after a great first book. It seems like a filler book, many words with very little substance. You can almost finish the first book and completely skip this one and not miss anything. Every plot is stretched and prolonged, the protagonist just gets more and more annoying.

Hopefully the next one is more relevant.

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8 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars

Just a meh book.

There is a slow start to this book even though the last book ended on a high note. A great story was built up listening to the first book and my hope was that it would carry over into this one but it was much the same as the first only less so. The lack of good pacing and the lack of story progression is astounding. This book feels like a filler episode of your favorite show, doing little to progress the characters and main story. You listen to it in hopes it starts to bring everything together or make characters grow closer to meeting or for some story to come through but it didn't. listen to this when you want a filler book. there are better out there though.

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Journey before destination

The torture-focus of the last book gives way to horror as all arcs see the rise of dark beasts. This is a good series that could be so much better with a mercenary co-author to cut out useless chaff and point out annoying plots. I’m going to list my issues but will also say that I enjoyed this enough that I’ll get the next book whenever it’s offered on sale.

As a Way of Kings fan, I can respect long, slow moving books if the story engages and develops the characters. Here, the main characters start and finish at virtually the same place:
-Ayrion is traveling on the fringe with no memory, battling monsters in shampoo, rinse, repeat fashion
-Ferrin is on the run, encountering problems in every town
-Ty is The Chosen One in dire need of training or explanation
If anything, everyone backslides and previous lessons must be learned anew. Take Ayrion once again learning to work his precognition magic.

The nonsense plots are working my last nerve. In particular, why does the 1,000 year old wizard Nyalis keep leaving without explaining anything except in the most cryptic terms? Then there’s smaller nonsense that keeps me up at night, like in both of these books and in the prequel Street Rat series, how come we never come across anyone else with the same powers? We have one metal mage, water dwarf, magic nullifier, etc … so convenient and yet so unnatural.

The use of modern-day language took me out of the story. For example, at one point there’s a worry about cholera and I got distracted. Might as well have said COVID was spreading. I would have liked a made up disease… or, given the title of the book, how about using the term plague?

My biggest annoyance, however, is the author’s love of bringing people back from the presumed dead. Let’s start with Ayrion (not a spoiler, that’s in the summary). Then there’s bad guys, good guys, and more. Much like TheWalkingDead show, if you don’t see the body, they’re likely to return. Maybe even if you do see a body… cause magic. Which piles on the feeling of sameness, like each book is a formula set on repeat. Yep, shampoo, rinse, repeat.

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    2 out of 5 stars

light sabers, force chokes, and Tom Riddle's diary

Oh My!

This book has some issues. I'm going to have moderate spoilers below, but almost nothing progresses during this book on most storylines, which is the biggest spoiler of all. I'm also probably going to spell every character's name wrong because audiobooks...

It starts where the previous book left off, Ty is off with the wizard to get healed and get trained up in magic. Only the author decides he doesn't want to go down that route yet and wants to muck about with the characters how they are. so he had some really contrived excuse to just send Ty back once healed, and the wizard is gone again... pretty heavy suspension of disbelief that he'd risk his life to save him from the tower years ago, now the tower finds ty, and the wizz just sends him back?

The wizard is not a character. he is a tool of the author. he pops up as a deus ex machina device repeatedly, then *poof* he's gone again. no explanation or reason. 'the fate of the world rests on you! oh wait, i have to go run some errands...' this is where the author has an option to do something Interesting. What if the wizard is trapped in his time-warped wizard school on another plane and has to expend a great deal of magic to impact this world, which he can only do for minutes at a time. There! So much inconsistency and poor writing cleaned up! Instead, we're just left wondering, why the heck does he just disappear or turn Ty loose back precisely where the white tower just found him if he's important?

the characterization of Ty was weak in the first book, intentionally. and that was fine. he's young, he's a bit of a blank slate. that's all good. except in this book the author tries to transform him and turn him to the 'dark side'. except you can't do that when a character doesn't have any depth to start with. it's just jarring and weird, and frustrating when characters are just being So Stupid. it breaks any story immersion. so yeah, Ty gets possessed by Tom riddles diary, which is defeated by piercing it with a magic arrow. there's also a magic ring that's part of the possession, but isn't removed and isn't mentioned. but the way the possession is explained is unsatisfactory. surely the possessor gets tired and must sleep. surely they're are limits on their power? surely if the possessed gets knocked unconscious it would pause the possession? surely that invisigirl could sneak up and bop him over the head and save some trouble? i guess not. why solve a problem quickly and move on with the story when you can drag it out for 200 pages of everyone bumbling around...

Ferrin the Smith was the most interesting character from the first book. he had personality. it would be cool to see him grow in this story. sadly no, unless you count the sudden discovery that he's an expert swordsman who can defeat 3 opponents at once. his power is underdeveloped too. he can make swords that don't break when other people are throwing fireballs and chucking people around with air. meh. what could have been interesting is if in the forging scene he discovers he can make blades that can light light on fire, like a precursor to those light saber weapons. or if he develops full telekinetic Magneto style powers, or even if he can move metal he's touching rapidly, throwing projectiles or extruding out a spike to rapidly impale an opponent. lots of lost potential there. and those characters end the book pretty much exactly how they started, plus 2 unbreakable swords. they don't link up with other characters, nobody dies, learns anything, changes. they just are still on the run...

*spoiler* As you probably guessed, Aryan survived and has a lot of content in this book. the thing is he ends up fighting the same battle over and over, again with no development. there's no progress to it, it's just drudgery. fight the bad guy, run away. fight the bad guy, run away. fight the bad guy, bad guy runs away, fight the bad guy, bad guy runs away... etc. and throughout each battle there are several times of, 'I'm so exhausted, i can't go on...' and then they go on. there's like 4 fake climaxes to each battle. just kill them already and move on.


villians-

Valtor is almost completely absent from the story. he was interesting, but not here.

the author had a real problem with letting people die. like minor villians just keep coming back. they always manage to run away from the end of a fight, and then keep being a nuisance. a lot of their machinations are overly complicated and convoluted. this book could be a lot shorter or have a lot more character and plot development if he didn't keep rehashing battles against the same people.

- that red haired bal-radur is set up a little for a redemption arc, which feels really shallow since she was shown being a villain first.

-Freya goes from gentle healer to waving a sword around after 200 words about training with liessa. seems legit..

-Liessa is covered in scars, apparently from training to fight with her father. I'm pretty sure that's not how you train with the sword. pretty sure that's just abuse. bruises are believable, but scars? really?

-every inn is filled with or owned by mean or downright hostile people. they will always try to rob you!

-almost every woman picks up a cleaver or frying pan as a weapon at some point...

- the slums crowd attacks valtors hidden mission base, and then make some really acrobatic rationalizations to not tell anyone (plot armor)

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Plague of Shadows, very entertaining book!

Great characters, great story and Tim Reynolds did an excellent job telling us!
My suggestion is to listen to the street rats of Aramoor first, then to the white tower and then the plague of shadows. If you enjoy sci-fi fantasy books then I highly recommend the books from Michael Wisehart!

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Awesome but...

Waaaay to many characters and unnecessary details. Do I need to know what every stranger likes for breakfast? I never know if I'm supposed to remember them, if they will tie in later or end up in peices. Then I'll hear a name and be like, what? who? The names sound familiar too. It's a bit convoluted, reminds me of Charles Dickens or Stephen King. I've only realized I'd read all 22 hours and not much has happened other than a bunch of dismembered bodies. I mean, after all this time surely the king has learned of the creatures?! Can only the 4 people know?? And it never did coincide with the main, I guess, story. The first was character driven, this one is VanDiesel-guy-gory driven. I prefer the former.

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Do not lose hope!

About 1/2 to 2/3 I was getting a little depressed, but it became more hopeful. I can sense the story lines coming together. I am hoping for good triumphing more and more in the next volume.

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Understanding

My biggest issue is that the main character is so clueless he is the most powerful person. yet he continues to cry and makes stupid decisions against the advice of other people including his parents. I see this in so many books it's insane. I can see making a bad choice but to keep building it until something goes so backwards that you end up just wanting the character to be killed off. So many of the other characters have strength s and make mistakes but they learn and move forward, and turns out better and better for them.

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