Cast a Bright Shadow
category: fantasy, author:Tanith Lee
book 1 of Lionwolforiginal copyright 2004,
read in March 2011 (and before, in April 2009)
Agamedes' opinion: 5 out of 10
This is a miserable book. You like a happy ending? Forget it. You like sympathetic characters? There are none. This book is simply a litany of woe.It's also a dream-like fantasy. And I don't mean that to sound positive. Illogical and inexplicable things happen because -- we have to believe -- because the gods decide that these things will happen.
Except for one of the gods. He's described as being an unthinking idiot. For no purpose -- no purpose of which he himself is aware -- he creates a woman. This woman saves some people then destroys another. For no clear reason. Except, perhaps, that a god who was not involved in her creation decided that this person must be destroyed.
Okay, so we may have to wait for the third book in the trilogy to get a happy ending. Judging by the book so far, any "happy ending" will involve all of the characters dying. Perhaps, at the end of the trilogy, this will be considered to be "happy" because their deaths are permanent.
You see, no-one really seems to die. Or, at least, people keep dying but they don't. Sometimes they die but come back as two separate people... Or, they spend most of the book as a ghost and then get back some form of life -- just in time to die again...
The whole book is a confusing mish-mash of what may be intended to be deeply symbolic mysticism. I read it as an author's inability to construct a coherent plot. Overlaid with the most miserable lot of characters that I have read about for a long, long time.
PS: I searched the Amazon site for the link to this book. The search (for "cast a bright shadow") also threw up Monty Python's Life of Brian. Forget Lionwolf. Enjoy life. Get Life of Brian instead.
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