6.02.2012
Shadow
Series: The Scavenger Trilogy Book One
Overall Grade: A
I have not yet read a book by K.J. Parker that has not earned an 'A' from me. A few months back, after a shopping spree at Powell's and a shopping spree on Amazon, I loaded myself up with most of Parker's books that I haven't read yet. So this is the start of at least 6 reviews.
'Shadow' begins with our protagonist waking up in the middle of a battlefield after everyone else has died. He's surrounded by dead bodies and can't remember who he is or how he got there. He has the worst case of amnesia. But apparently he's very well versed in swordfighting because when the first person he encounters tries to kill him, he handily disarms the man and kills him instead without even consciously trying. Then he travels around for a while in a cart with a woman, pretending to be god and priestess and conning cowpoke villages out of food and offerings. But trouble seems to follow our protagonist, and people are continually trying to kill him, or somehow the people he's around get killed. And when he sleeps, he dreams he's other people, living different lives. And there's a swordmonk named Monach who's also running around. And raiders who mysteriously appear from across the sea and destroy whole towns leaving no survivors. And a running motif of crows.
Like pretty much any Parker novel I've read, it is really hard to do justice to this novel in a description that doesn't give anything away. Though I am very curious to see how the next two books play out, since you kind of have an idea of how the various threads are tied together by the end of this book.
Labels: genre: fantasy, genre: fiction, media: book, series: Scavenger trilogy
