Book Review
Title: The Shadow Cats (Girl of Fire and Thorns Book 0.5) by Rae Carson
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Rating: 3 Stars
Girl of Fire and Thorns is the Double Booked Book Club pick for March, so I decided to read the three prequel novellas before getting into the chapters I need to read for the first book. As these are novellas my reviews are going to be shorter but I hope you enjoy them anyway because in my experience a lot of people skip the novellas in a series. I also knew nothing about this series at all before getting into it and I was a little reserved as I tend to read more adult fantasy than young adult fantasy so I didn’t know what was in store for me.
We are introduced to Alodia, the Crown Princess of Orovalle as she is heading to the wedding of Conde Paxon in one of the outer regions of the Kingdom. During the journey she thinks about the previous war with a neighbouring kingdom, Invierne and how her younger sister, Elisa was God’s chosen rather than herself when even we can see that Alodia is the stronger, more level-headed sister and could do better things with that power. Alodia also seems to have a strong bond with her attendant, Zito as he is the one that realises that the drought in the region is a blight seemingly caused by losing God’s favour. After arriving a little girl, Lupita, the niece of Paxon’s future wife goes missing seemingly taken by a jaguar that they believe is an instrument of God as it always appears before disaster. Elisa knows from her reading that this isn’t how jaguars act and when the girl isn’t found, Alodia is going to look for Lupita herself with Zito’s help.
They find the jaguar and are attacked by it with Alodia dislocating her ankle, after the beast is dead, Zito decides to head back to the castle to get help. However, Lupita ends up finding Alodia as she has been hiding from the beast. They see that Zito has been captured by the bandits known as Perditos who are being lead by a sorcerer from Invierne who also seems responsible for the blight. Alodia knows that if she doesn’t do something then Zito is going to die been as they have already blinded him. She sends Lupita back to the castle and the girl can move faster than her as she rushes to save her friend. She ends up killing the sorcerer and saving Zito when Elisa finds them with the guards from the palace. Alodia and Zito are given time to recover before the wedding but this incident has strengthened Alodia’s relationship with the region as Paxon swears himself as her vessel and she sees a worth in her sister but she knows she will have to be married to someone strong to bring it out of her. Overall, The Shadow Cats was an interesting introduction to some of the main characters of the series and the power and magic systems and I am intriguing to see where it goes.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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