Es geht um den Diebstahl eines lang verborgenen Reliktes. Ein Reise. Ein Fähigkeit, ein Talent oder eine Fertigkeit oder gar eine Zusammenkumpft verändert diese Reise oder prägt sie?

Warum man dieses Buch einfach lesen sollte
- es ist feinste Fantasy
- Sensucht nach Abendteur und großen Geschichten
- Mitfiebern zu können ohne de Gemächlichkeit eines guten Buches zu verlieren

Ich liebe es einfach.




Warum habe ich nur das zweite Buch nicht mitgenommen ??? ahh, es hat so einen guten Aufhänger am Ende.
*mir selbst in den Po beiß*

Die Jagt schreitet voran... Mächte aus vielen Teilen der drei Welten sind angereist, um dass Relikt als ihres zu beanspruchen. Ist es möglich sich für eine dieser Mächte zu entscheiden oder kann man sich am Ende doch nur auf sich selbst verlassen?

Grunde warum dieses Buch lesen sollte:
- du hast den ersten Teil gelesen
- Wanderungen/ Reisen und die gehetzte Jagt durch andere ziehen dich an
- du willst wissen wer alle Teilnehmen im bisherigen großen Suche nach dem Relikt waren (charaktäre noch näher kennen lernen)

I must confess: I bought this book (second-hand, as I do most books) JUST for the cover.

Mr. Irvine has ambitions for this tetralogy, of which A Shadow on the Glass is the first volume. He starts with a massive concept: three separate humanoid races/civilizations with ancient conflicts, dating back not only into the darkest reaches of his planet's history, but even further, to when they occupied other planets (or possibly even other dimensions.) At the start of this book, these conflicts and their combatants are so far removed from the present day that they are the subjects only of historical research by the members of the historian/storyteller profession, called "chroniclers." One chronicler, pursuing the equivalent of his masters' thesis, discovers a possible new interpretation of one of the best known stories (the aspiration of every fledgling chronicler), and presses to uncover its truth even when he is warned off by his professors. The story, it seems, is so potentially earthshaking that he is banished from the school.

Meanwhile, a psychically gifted young woman of mixed heritage (product of a marriage between two of the humanoid races) finds herself dragged along on a magician's quest to acquire an ancient artifact from an ambitious and long-lived warlord who himself figures in some of the ancient tales.

Of course, the chronicler and the psychic meet and join forces to uncover the artifact's mysteries and get it back to its true owners. On the way, they encounter still more legendary leaders, find themselves in magical cities, are betrayed, and escape relentless hunters time and again. And after 400+ pages of quest/Rough Guide travelogue, we are hardly further along in solving the mystery or wrapping up any of the open storylines.

As I said, the concept is ambitious. Unfortunately, Mr. Irvine attempts to unveil his worldscape by throwing the reader in headfirst, and his expository skills really aren't up to the challenge of making that sudden immersion in this world an opportunity to swim in the current - rather the reader nearly drowns in the flood of mysterious and unexplained cultural references. Eventually, if the reader stays the course, the backstory is exposed to a degree where not every new revelation further confuses.

It's an interesting story. In the hands of a better writer, I suspect it could be fascinating - as it is, it is merely a chore - and for probably the first time, I am unfascinated enough to forego chasing down the rest of the books.

A long, confusing book which perfectly matches its characters' feelings about the action.

This is the first of a quartet of books. Fantasy it be, some things were just plain impossible, in my mind. Perils whisked away in the blink of an eye, for example. Characters showing up in the nick of time, another sad trait. This tale was a constant chase / trek with no real plot.

I will not continue the series.

That was a mess. Sometimes you wish that a book would be truly horrible so that you could just put it aside and be done with it. This one was just good enough to keep me going and I was going back and forth between 3 and 2 stars for a bit. If I had a 2.5 option, I would have taken it. The stupid ending made me decide on a 2 star quoting in the end. I managed to get to the end, but I shan't be continuing in this series. I've learned my lesson in the past about books that show some promise but aren't very good in the beginning, they just don't get better as you go along, they get worse.

It's a damn shame, because there was good story hidden in there somewhere, which is why this feels so frustrating, it was just buried under a whole lot of bad writing. How this got past an editor, I'll never understand. The plot is all over the place, the pacing is off, the descriptive writing is nonsensical and the dialogue feels like it comes out of a bad anime. First job to improve this book? Cut the number of exclamation marks in the dialogue by half, at the very least. I expect most people in this world are hoarse from all the shouting they do all the time.

And then, one of the most important things to me personally in any fiction novel: the characters. This is the part that stings the most because there was definite potential here. Karan especially is a very strong female character and to Irvine's credit, he doesn't follow the clichés at all. She is much more badass than her love interest Llian and it shows. Unfortunately her personality it rather nonsensical. She's got more mood swings than a schizophrenic teenager, going from "oh, my Llian" to "go away" in like five sentences. They have the weirdest building relationship I've ever seen and despite having strong feelings towards each other, somehow never feel the need to talk about it to each other.
Llian is pretty frigging useless, both as a character and a person. He's a burden to Karan more than anything else, something which she rarely fails to point out to him, though through some inexplicable reason she can't do without him either. Because he is such a useless fool throughout most of the story, his sudden unexplained acts of heroism are a little hard to believe, though they were some of the better parts of the book. Indeed, very occasionally this book felt like it might be going somewhere. But then you'd get a scene where one or more of the characters would do something so inane or stupid that the only reason I conceive for it is that Irvine needed it to advance his plot. At one point, one character stands trial and is sentenced to death for doing fuck all. I still don't understand just what exactly she was condemned for. Then there's the guy that leaves the woman he loves out of his sight for no particular reason even though she is not doing well and she has many enemies that might show up, pretty much just because we needed her to be alone for a plot point in the next scene. It is just a big mess of a story with a good idea and not a bad background world underneath it all, but it is just not worth it. As I said, I won't be continuing this series and I can't recommend this one.