Semi-Finalist Review: Flight of Sorcery and Shadow by Meg Cowley [SPFBO]

It’s semi-finalist review time! While there have been several books within our batch that have had been given to multiple readers to get a wider opinion, we are formally acknowledging our top four highest scoring books as our semi-finalists. Meg Cowley’s Flight of Sorcery and Shadow is one such book! And if you haven’t sussed out the other three yet, you can see our tweet with all of the covers here.

We will be posting these semi finalist reviews in no particular order, and each of them will feature multiple (sometimes opposing) opinions from our judges. Rather than requiring a mandatory review from each judge, however, our readers have the option to opt-out of providing any text should they feel like all of their opinions have been touched on. We figure that this saves you from reading the same stuff a whole bunch of times! Please keep in mind that the nature of the competition means that there will be a fair bit of critique present in these reviews — we have discussed the merits of each book a lot at this stage — but we hope that we have kept this fair and balanced, and it of course only reflects our own opinions.

With all of that out of the way… let’s talk books.

The Blurb

Aedon’s captivity is over when darkness descends upon the realm. The elf’s only choices become escape or death—a far cry from his past fame and notoriety as a legendary thief. Lost, alone, and desperate to escape the deadly beasts now stalking him, he does not count on meeting Lief, a ranger of the woodland elves…and Aedon’s natural worst enemy.

Lief prides herself on being one of Lune’s finest rangers—now, she is the only one left alive. She must alert the Queen at once that the realm’s defences have been breached by unimaginably malevolent sorcery. The last thing she needs is to stumble upon an escaped prisoner.

Aedon and Lief become unlikely allies. Neither can survive without the other in a deadly race to outrun what hunts them. Lief must learn to trust another again, and Aedon must dust off his once legendary skills if they are to escape—but what else will bloom in the darkness that niether of them can deny?
An old enemy rises. Stronger than before. He will consume all in his path, until dominion over the world is his. Multiple fates are bound in an inexorable descent into darkness.

Devin’s Thoughts

I seem to have been cursed in my SPFBO tenure with books that are really difficult to score and review for a variety of reasons and this time is no different. Flight of Sorcery and Shadow is quite traditional in its fantasy setting (think elves and magical forests) and tells the story of four POV characters, Lief and Aedon, who travel together; Venya, a librarian; and Vasili, a dragon rider of the Winged Kingsguard. Each has their own stuff going on, from zombie elves to grumpy grimoires that don’t want to be re-shelved, to the possible return of the Big Evil, but how they are connected is, even by the end of the book, very unclear. Which leads me to what I struggled with in this book, so it looks like we’re going negatives first today, of which there was really only one…

The plot structure. Or rather the lack thereof. No book needs to adhere to a set of plot beats or all work in the same way, but by the end of the first book in a series I expect to know what the struggle is going to be, what the characters are striving for and where the story is vaguely headed… none of which I knew by the end of this book. If you consider an overarching plot (not considering all the little events that take place within that) as being a progression from A to Z, Flight barely feels like it gets us even from A to B. Lief and Aedon go through a lot, but none of it forwards a sense of overall plot, it’s just things that happen to them in their attempt to escape zombie elves. Venya’s library adventures are very cool, but could be a completely separate, self-contained little story that even has a somewhat satisfying conclusion already built in, and Vasili gets so little screen time he really only has time to get himself in trouble once. I was left with no idea whatsoever what to expect in the second book, not because there have been many twists and turns, but because I have no evidence with which to build any expectations at all beyond a vague sense that they’ll all end up fighting the Big Evil.

Flight is the first book in a series, but it also appears to be far from the first book set in this particular world, which may be the source of my difficulty. Perhaps someone who has read some of these characters, places and situations before can see a path that I cannot, or at least has some idea of what the Big Evil means since they have no explanation or presence in the narrative barring their name being grimaced at and their Bad History being waved at without actually being described.

SO. All that sounds pretty bad, but I really enjoyed reading this book! Despite the lack of overarching direction and forward motion, the smaller arcs the characters took were interesting and pacey, and the characters were enjoyable to read. And there were a bunch of fun little details, especially in Venya’s sections, and some tense, budding relationships that kept me turning the pages. It is full of fun vibes and I’m interested to see where it goes from here.

Adam’s Thoughts:

I think I’m alone in the judges with my relative coolness on this book. I had no general issues with the writing, but I struggled to connect with any of the characters, and much of the setting elements felt derivative (down to the actual lifting of a couple of names from Tolkein, which I find distracting rather than egregious). Even the zombies, a less utilised trope in epic fantasy, get replaced by more generic evil monsters. At least I thought the library filled with intelligent magic books was pretty imaginative beyond other versions of the same that I’ve seen.

The Venya plotline was the highlight for me, and in this book pretty much stands alone well enough it could have been a separate novella, discounting her familial connections to the wider plot. I found the other two plotlines weaker iterations of things I’ve seen before. 

Unfortunately my least favourite of the semi-finalists, but I think people who connect with the characters will find much more merit in it than I did.

Calvin’s Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this one. I feel like it has a certain amount of charm. All the criticisms Devin mentions are true… but they just didn’t bother me. Yes, it’s a very traditional fantasy in terms of elves who live in a magic forest and dragon riders and magic that is rather more hand wavium than anything else. But it was also just a fun, enjoyable read. That’s especially true for Vanya’s viewpoint. A library with sentient books? Yes please! 

The biggest weakness, in my opinion, is that feeling that this entire book is really more of a prologue to the rest of the series than a true book one. First books in an epic series can sometimes have that feeling, but in this case it really feels like we haven’t made any progress by the time we get to the end of the book. I personally felt that if I had seen less from Lief and Aedon’s perspective, and seen a lot more from Visili and Vanya, the book might have felt less like a prologue. 

Even with all of this, there is plenty to enjoy in this one and if you don’t mind a more traditional setting and a plot that definitely isn’t of the fast-paced variety I’d suggest you give it a shot. After all, there is a library with talking books! 

Hiu’s Thoughts:

I don’t really have a lot to add to what everyone else has said here! My opinions mostly align with Devin’s and Calvin’s, but I do want to emphasise that feeling of fun that both have touched on! With respect to the criticisms raised (which, again, I do agree with), I think that Flight suffers from the fact that this is a competition (as do all of the books, to be fair). The competitive element inherently means that everything is put under a microscope and that we as judges need to nitpick everything we read in order to find our “best” book. As such, a lot of our criticisms of this book mostly arose in the after-the-fact discussion. While we were actually reading it (with the exception of Adam), I think that we actually all had a lot of fun! I mean, there is a talking grimoire that can turn into a puppy. Which I am SHOCKED that none of my co-judges have mentioned, but, I mean… how can you not love that?

In a real world scenario, where you as the reader would be picking this up without that requirement for this kind of examination and discussion, would it be as big a deal? Nah. You’d likely read it, have a fun time, and immediately move on to the next book. And like Devin said, this is a book full of fun vibes, if not one with a lot of overall plot movement.

From our perspective, we need to balance the pros and cons of each entrant. From your perspective… Go and meet the book puppy!

Conclusions

Considering all of the above, Flight of Sorcery and Shadow is in serious contention for our finalist spot. Taking an average of all readers, this book finished with a final score of…