Shadowfell

Shadowfell by Juliet Marillier
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Neryn has one of the darkest pasts I've seen Marillier write, which is surprising considering it's in the YA genre. Still, it helps you admire her more as she struggles through her past to find answers to her future. And of course, you can't help but love the love interest--Marillier has always done a great job with creating a man who feels real and has faults, unlike the model-esque, perfect men that are typical in YA fiction right now.

This book had an odd pace, absorbing my interest for chapters at a time, then slowing down before picking up again. The writing style is definitely different from her Sevenwaters series; you can tell the book was written for a YA audience instead of an adult one. It's still good, there's just a lot more dialogue, a lot less description, and less of a sense of completion. Neryn does manage to reach her stated goal, but you can tell there's still much more of the story to come, whereas with most of Marillier's other books, each novel can technically stand alone.

Certainly worth reading if you're a fan of Marillier, just don't expect it to feel exactly like many of her other works.

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