The Shadow of What Was Lost Introduces a Fresh Fantasy Voice
The joy of high fantasy is in the fall: the fall into a world with characters you understand and places you don’t, the fall into a story that expands and evolves with every turn of the page. With their extensive world-building and voluminous casts of characters, epic fantasies are easily suited to long series, and their authors tend to remain in the forefronts of our minds for years: A Song of Ice and Fire and George R.R. Martin; The Wheel of Time and Robert Jordan; Mistborn and Brandon Sanderson; The Kingkiller Chronicles and Patrick Rothfuss. These are the names we remember, the stories we know. They remain with us. Every now and then, a new voice and new world enters our collective consciousness and takes hold of it. That’s what James Islington accomplishes with his debut, The Shadow of What Was Lost, the beginning of a trilogy that has already drawn more glowing comparisons to these books that have earned a permanent spot on our shelves.
The Shadow of What Was Lost feels old-fashioned in the best of ways, molding familiar genre traditions into something wholly unique. In a world where the magical class has been overthrown, hunted, and subjugated, the struggle cannot simply be divided between magic and mundane or human and divine. The evil that encroaches Andarra, the center of the action, is neither simple, singly focused, or, for that matter, definitively evil.
It’s been 20 years since the Unseen War, which overthrew the Augurs, powerful and portentous demi-gods. The powers that had cemented Augur rule betrayed them, and those who once feared and obeyed the them rose up, wiping out the leaders and binding those with lesser magical abilities, the Gifted, to Four Tenets that restrict the use of their powers.
In this radically altered landscape, a new generation has come of age, receiving their grooming and, for all intents and purposes, obedience training in the Gifted academies that remain. Genies, however, are hard to put back into bottles. Davian, a student of the Gifted, is at once an excellent pupil and a consummate failure. He struggles to wield Essence, the magic that should sustain and flow through him with ease, but excels at other, more uncomfortable abilities. He can “read” people to determine whether they’re telling the truth, a power that once belonged only to the Augurs. That’s a dangerous association for Davian, raised in a world endlessly suspicious of those with abilities outside the norm. But as forces long thought defeated descend from the North, Devian’s quest to understand who he is and what he can do takes on greater urgency than he can comprehend.
This isn’t a story about Davian alone. What makes this book sing, even more than its lush world-building, is the attention paid to its characters, even those on the periphery. Davian’s best friend, Wirr, could easily fall into Mary Sue territory, finding natural competency in matters both magical and moral. Instead, his internal thoughts reveals deeper insecurities, a chip on his shoulder, and a penchant for righteousness that makes him both an asset and a liability to Davian. Likewise, Asha, possibly the most capable of the Gifted, is given shading to elevate her from mere possible love interest to super spy, leader, and warrior.
Teenagers uniting to save the world is an old trick, and there’s a reason: it works. As the pages race past, Davian, Wirr, and Asha’s paths diverge, as each plays a different role in the fight a common enemy—or so they believe. Integral to this fight is another young man, accused of horrific slaughters, with no memory of his identity, nor of his alleged crimes. Caeden knows something about the ancient foe stirring in the North, but he doesn’t know what it means. What is clear is that his fate is tied to Davian’s in ways we’ve only begun to explore.
Because yes, we’re very much at the beginning of this journey. In many ways, this is the standard setup novel, laying out myriad plot strings that will wind their way through two doorstopping sequels. Yet there’s also plenty of action to be enjoyed right here, as the characters hopscotch across countries, planes, and time. An enemy threatens from outside while an administration rots from within. By the end, opposing factions must choose which devil they’d rather dance with. This first book isn’t just a morsel, but a whole tier of the cake.
Fantasy debuts, particularly for aspiring series, often falter, as the genre’s foundations require a solidity few fresh-faced authors can craft. The Shadow of What Was Lost build a rock-solid platform upon which, we imagine, a towering edifice will grow. Because the other thing about debuts is this: they’re all potential. Hope springs eternal. And based on this book, Islington deserves those comparisons to genre stalwarts. Love The Wheel of Time? This is about to become your new favorite series.
The Shadow of What Was Lost is available November 8.